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ARCADIAN 
ADVENTURES 

WITH THE IDLE RICH 

BY STEPHEN LE ACOCK 

AUTHOR OF "BEHIND THE BEYOND" 
"NONSENSE NOVELS," "LITERARY LAPSES," ETC. 



NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY 
LONDON : JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
TORONTO : BELL & COCKBURN : MCMXIV 



Uy^.u Z 






COPYBIGHT, I914, BY 

THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 



COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY 

JOHN LANE COMPANY \J 



NOV -b 1914 



:!.A:j882r)2 ^'' 



<u^~ t- 



CONTENTS 



Chapter Page 

I. A Little Dinner With Mr. Lucullus 

Fyshe 9 

II. The Wizard of Finance .... 48 

III. The Arrested Philanthropy of Mr. Tom- 

linson 77 

IV. The Yahi-Bahi Oriental Society of Mrs. 

Rasselyer-Brown 115 

V. The Love Story of Mr. Peter Spillikins . 156 

- VI. The Rival Churches of St. Asaph and St. 

OsoPH 200 

Vn. The Ministrations of the Rev. Utter- 
must DUMFARTHING 234 

Vin. The Great Fight for Clean Government 274 



ARCADIAN ADVENTURES 
WITH THE IDLE RICH 



ARCADIAN ADVENTURES 
WITH THE IDLE RICH 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

BEHIND THE BEYOND 
NONSENSE NOVELS 
LITERARY LAPSES 

SUNSHINE SKETCHES 



Chapter I. — A Little Dinner with Mr, 
JLucullus Fyshe 



THE Mausoleum Club stands on the 
quietest corner of the best residen- 
tial street in the City. It is a Gre- 
cian building of white stone. About 
It are great elm trees with birds — the most ex- 
pensive kind of birds — singing in the branches. 
The street in the softer hours of the morning 
has an almost reverential quiet. Great mo- 
tors move drowsily along it, with solitary chauf- 
feurs returning at 10.30 after conveying the 
earlier of the millionaires to their down-town 
offices. The sunlight flickers through the elm 
trees, illuminating expensive nursemaids wheel- 
ing valuable children in little perambulators. 
Some of the children are worth millions and 
millions. In Europe, no doubt, you may see in 
the Unter den Linden avenue or the Champs 
Elysees a little prince or princess go past with 
a clattering mihtary gutrd to do honour. But 
that is nothing. It is not half so Impressive, in 
the real sense, as what you may observe every 
morning on Plutoria Avenue beside the Mauso- 
leum Club In the quietest part of the city. 
9 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Here you may see a little toddling princess in a 
rabbit suit who owns fifty distilleries in her own 
right. There, in a lacquered perambulator, 
sails past a little hooded head that controls from 
its cradle an entire New Jersey corporation. 
The United States attorney-general is suing her 
as she sits, in a vain attempt to make her dis- 
solve herself into constituent companies. Near 
by is a child of four, in a khaki suit, who repre- 
sents the merger of two trunk line railways. 
You may meet in the flickered sunlight any 
number of little princes and princesses far more 
real than the poor survivals of Europe. Incal- 
culable infants wave their fifty-dollar ivory rat- 
tles in an inarticulate greeting to one another. 
A million dollars of preferred stock laughs 
merrily in recognition of a majority control go- 
ing past in a go-cart drawn by an imported 
nurse. And through it all the sunlight falls 
through the elm-trees, and the birds sing and 
the motors hum, so that the whole world as 
seen from the boulevard of Plutoria Avenue is 
the very pleasantest place imaginable. 

Just below Plutoria Avenue, and parallel 
with it, the trees die out and the brick and stone 
of the City begins in earnest. Even from the 
Avenue you see the tops of the sky-scraping 
buildings in the big commercial streets, and can 
hear or almost hear the roar of the elevated 
railway, earning dividends. And beyond that 

10 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

again the City sinks lower, and is choked and 
crowded with the tangled streets and little 
houses of the slums. 

In fact, if you were to mount to the roof of 
the Mausoleum Club itself on Plutoria Avenue 
you could almost see the slums from there. 
But why should you? And on the other hand, 
if you nev^er went up on the roof, but only dined 
inside among the palm-trees, you would never 
know that the slums existed — which is much 
better. 

There are broad steps leading up to the club, 
so broad and so agreeably covered with mat- 
ting that the physical exertion of lifting one- 
self from one's motor to the door of the club 
Is reduced to the smallest compass. The richer 
members are not ashamed to take the steps one 
at a time, first one foot and then the other; 
and at tight money periods, when there is a 
black cloud hanging over the Stock Exchange, 
you may see each and every one of the mem- 
bers of the Mausoleum Club dragging himself 
up the steps after this fashion, his restless eyes 
filled with the dumb pathos of a man wondering 
where he can put his hand on half a million 
dollars. 

But at gayer times, when there are gala re- 
ceptions at the club, its steps are all buried un- 
der expensive carpet, soft as moss and covered 
over with a long pavilion of red and white 
II 



Arcadian Adventures tvith the Idle Rich 

awning to catch the snowflakes; and beautiful 
ladies are poured into the club by the motorful. 
Then indeed it is turned into a veritable Arca- 
dia; and for a beautiful pastoral scene, such as 
would have gladdened the heart of a poet who 
understood the cost of things, commend me to 
the Mausoleum Club on just such an evening. 
Its broad corridors and deep recesses are filled 
with shepherdesses such as you never saw, 
dressed in beautiful shimmering gowns, and 
wearing feathers in their hair that droop off 
sideways at every angle known to trigonometry. 
And there are shepherds too with broad white 
waistcoats and little patent leather shoes and 
heavy faces and congested cheeks. And there 
is dancing and conversation among the shep- 
herds and shepherdesses, with such brilliant 
flashes of wit and repartee about the rise in 
Wabash and the fall in Cement that the soul of 
Louis Quatorze would leap to hear it. And 
later there is supper at little tables, when the 
shepherds and shepherdesses consume preferred 
stocks and gold-interest bonds in the shape of 
chilled champagne and iced asparagus, and 
great platefuls of dividends and special quar- 
terly bonuses are carried to and fro in silver 
dishes by Chinese philosophers dressed up to 
look like waiters. 

But on ordinary days there are no ladies in 
the club, but only the shepherds. You may see 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

them sitting about in little groups of two and 
three under the palm-trees drinking whiskey 
and soda; though of course the more temper- 
ate among them drink nothing but whiskey and 
Lithia water, and those who have important 
business to do in the afternoon limit themselves 
to whiskey and Radnor, or whiskey and Magi 
water. There are as many kinds of bubbling, 
gurgling, mineral waters in the caverns of the 
Mausoleum Club as ever sparkled from the 
rocks of Homeric Greece. And when you have 
once grown used to them, it is as impossible to 
go back to plain water as it is to live again in 
the forgotten house in a side street that you in- 
habited long before you became a member. 

Thus the members sit and talk in undertones 
that float to the ear through the haze of Ha- 
vana smoke. You may hear the older men ex- 
plaining that the country is going to absolute 
ruin, and the younger ones explaining that the 
country is forging ahead as it never did before; 
but chiefly they love to talk of great national 
questions, such as the protective tariff and the 
need of raising It, the sad decline of the moral- 
ity of the working man, the spread of syndical- 
ism and the lack of Christianity In the labour 
class, and the awful growth of selfishness among 
the mass of the people. 

So they talk, except for two or three that 
drop off to directors' meetings, till the after- 
13 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

noon fades and darkens into evening, and the 
noiseless Chinese philosophers turn on soft 
lights here and there among the palm-trees. 
Presently they dine at white tables glittering 
with cut glass and green and yellow Rhine 
wines ; and after dinner they sit again among 
the palm-trees, half hidden in the blue smoke, 
still talking of the tariff and the labour class 
and trying to wash away the memory and the 
sadness of it in floods of mineral waters. So 
the evening passes into night, and one by one 
the great motors come throbbing to the door, 
and the Mausoleum Club empties and darkens 
till the last member is borne away and the Ar- 
cadian day ends in well-earned repose. 

"I want you to give me your opinion very, 
very frankly," said Mr. LucuUus Fyshe on one 
side of the luncheon table to the Rev. Fareforth 
Furlong on the other. 

"By all means," said Mr. Furlong. 

Mr. Fyshe poured out a wineglassful of soda 
and handed it to the rector to drink. 

"Now tell me very truthfully," he said, "is 
there too much carbon in it?" 

"By no means," said Mr. Furlong. 

"And — quite frankly — not too much hydro- 
gen?" 

"Oh, decidedly not." 

"And you would not say that the percentage 
14 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

of sodium bicarbonate was too great for the 
ordinary taste?" 

"I certainly should not," said Mr. Furlong, 
and in this he spoke the truth. 

"Very good then," said Mr. Fyshe, "I shall 
use it for the Duke of Dulham this afternoon." 

He uttered the name of the Duke with that 
quiet, democratic carelessness which meant that 
he didn't care whether half a dozen other mem- 
bers lunching at the club could hear or not. 
After all, what was a duke to a man who was 
president of the People's Traction and Subur- 
ban Co. and the Republican Soda and Siphon 
Co-operative, and chief director of the People's 
District Loan and Savings? If a man with a 
broad basis of popular support like that was 
proposing to entertain a duke, surely there 
could be no doubt about his motives? None 
at all. 

Naturally, too, if a man manufactures soda 
himself, he gets a little over-sensitive about the 
possibility of his guests noticing the existence 
of too much carbon in it. 

In fact, ever so many of the members of the 
Mausoleum Club manufacture things, or cause 
them to be manufactured, or — what is the same 
thing — merge them when they are manufac- 
tured. This gives them their peculiar chemical 
attitude towards their food. One often sees a 
member suddenly call the head waiter at break- 
15 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

fast to tell him that there Is too much ammonia 
in the bacon; and another one protest at the 
amount of glucose in the olive oil; and another 
that there is too high a percentage of nitrogen 
in the anchovy. A man of distorted imagina- 
tion might think this tasting of chemicals in the 
food a sort of nemesis of fate upon the mem- 
bers. But that would be very foolish, for in 
every case the head waiter, who is the chief of 
the Chinese philosophers mentioned above, says 
that he'll see to it immediately and have the 
percentage removed. And as for the members 
themselves, they are about as much ashamed of 
manufacturing and merging things as the Mar- 
quis of Salisbury is ashamed of the founders of 
the Cecil family. 

What more natural therefore than that Mr. 
Lucullus Fyshe, before serving the soda to the 
Duke, should try it on somebody else? And 
what better person could be found for this 
than Mr. Furlong, the saintly young rector of 
St. Asaph's, who had enjoyed the kind of ex- 
pensive college education calculated to develop 
all the faculties. Moreover, a rector of the 
Anglican Church who has been in the foreign 
mission field is the kind of person from whom 
one can find out, more or less incidentally, how 
one should address and converse with a duke, 
and whether you call him, "Your Grace," or 
"His Grace," or just "Grace," or "Duke," or 
i6 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

what. All of which things would seem to a 
director of the People's Bank and the presi- 
dent of the Republican Soda Co. so trivial in 
importance that he would scorn to ask about 
them. 

So that was why Mr. Fyshe had asked Mr. 
Furlong to lunch with him, and to dine with him 
later on in the same day at the Mausoleum 
Club to meet the Duke of Dulham. And Mr. 
Furlong, realising that a clergyman must be all 
things to all men and not avoid a man merely 
because he is a duke had accepted the invita- 
tion to lunch, and had promised to come to 
dinner, even though it meant postponing the 
Willing Workers' Tango Class of St. Asaph's 
until the following Friday. 

Thus it had come about that Mr. Fyshe was 
seated at lunch, consuming a cutlet and a pint 
of Moselle in the plain, downright fashion of a 
man so democratic that he is practically a revo- 
lutionary socialist, and doesn't mind saying so; 
and the young rector of St. Asaph's was sitting 
opposite to him in a religious ecstasy over a 
salmi of duck. 

"The Duke arrived this morning, did he 
not?" said Mr. Furlong. 

"From New York," said Mr. Fyshe; "he is 
staying at the Grand Palaver. I sent a telegram 
through one of our New York directors of the 
17 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Traction, and his Grace has very kindly prom- 
ised to come over here to dine." 

"Is he here for pleasure?" asked the rector. 

"I understand he is — " Mr. Fyshe was going 
to say "about to invest a large part of his for- 
tune in American securities," but he thought bet- 
ter of it. Even with the clergy it is well to be 
careful. So he substituted "is very much inter- 
ested in studying American conditions." 

"Does he stay long?" asked Mr. Furlong. 

Had Mr. Lucullus Fyshe replied quite truth- 
fully, he would have said, "Not if I can get his 
money out of him quickly," but he merely an- 
swered, "That I don't know." 

"He will find much to interest him," went on 
the rector in a musing tone. "The position of 
the Anglican Church in America should afford 
him an object of much consideration. I under- 
stand," he added, feeling his way, "that his 
Grace is a man of deep piety." 

"Very deep," said Mr. Fyshe. 

"And of great philanthropy?" 

"Very great." 

"And I presume," said the rector, taking a 
devout sip of the unfinished soda, "that he is a 
man of immense wealth?" 

"I suppose so," answered Mr. Fyshe quite 
carelessly; "all these fellows are." — Mr. Fyshe 
generally referred to the British aristocracy as 
"these fellows" — "Land, you know, feudal 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

estates ; sheer robbery, I call it. How the work- 
ing class, the proletariat, stand for such tyranny 
is more than I can see. Mark my words. Fur- 
long, some day they'll rise and the whole thing 
will come to a sudden end." 

Mr. Fyshe was here launched upon his fa- 
vourite topic; but he interrupted himself, just 
for a moment, to speak to the waiter. 

"What the devil do you mean," he said, "by 
serving asparagus half cold?" 

"Very sorry, sir," said the waiter, "shall I 
take it out?" 

"Take it out? Of course take it out, and see 
that you don't serve me stuff of that sort again, 
or I'll report you." 

"Very sorry, sir," said the waiter. 

Mr. Fyshe looked at the vanishing waiter 
with contempt upon his features. "These pam- 
pered fellows are getting unbearable," he said. 
"By Gad, if I had my way I'd fire the whole lot 
of them: lock 'em out, put 'em on the street. 
That would teach 'em. Yes, Furlong, you'll 
live to see it that the whole working class will 
one day rise against the tyranny of the upper 
classes, and society will be overwhelmed." 

But if Mr. Fyshe had realised that at that 
moment, in the kitchen of the Mausoleum Club, 
in those sacred precincts themselves, there was 
a walking delegate of the Waiters' Interna- 
tional Union leaning against a sideboard, with 
19 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

his bowler hat over one corner of his eye, and 
talking to a little group of the Chinese philos- 
ophers, he would have known that perhaps the 
social catastrophe was a little nearer than even 
he suspected. 

"Are you inviting any one else to-night?" 
asked Mr. Furlong. 

"I should have liked to ask your father," 
said Mr. Fyshe, "but unfortunately he is out 
of town." 

What Mr. Fyshe really meant was, "I am 
extremely glad not to have to ask your father, 
whom I would not introduce to the Duke on 
any account." 

Indeed, Mr. Furlong, senior, the father of 
the rector of St. Asaph's, who was President 
of the New Amalgamated Hymnal Corpora- 
tion, and Director of the Hosanna Pipe and 
Steam Organ, Limited, was entirely the wrong 
man for Mr. Fyshe's present purpose. In fact, 
he was reputed to be as smart a man as ever 
sold a Bible. At this moment he was out of 
town, busied in New York with the preparation 
of the plates of his new Hindu Testament 
(copyright) ; but had he learned that a duke 
with several millions to Invest was about to 
visit the city, he would not have left it for the 
whole of Hindustan. 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"I suppose you are asking Mr. Boulder," 
said the rector. 

"No," answered Mr. Fyshe very decidedly, 
dismissing the name absolutely. 

Indeed, there was even better reason not to 
introduce Mr. Boulder to the Duke. Mr. Fyshe 
had made that sort of mistake once, and never 
Intended to make It again. It was only a year 
ago, on the occasion of the visit of young Vis- 
count FItzThistle to the Mausoleum Club, that 
Mr. Fyshe had Introduced Mr. Boulder to the 
Viscount and had suffered grievously thereby. 
For Mr. Boulder had no sooner met the Vis- 
count than he Invited him up to his hunting- 
lodge in Wisconsin, and that was the last thing 
known of the Investment of the FItzThistle 
fortune. 

This Mr. Boulder of whom Mr. Fyshe spoke 
might indeed have been seen at that moment at 
a further table of the lunch room eating a soli- 
tary meal, an oldish man with a great frame 
suggesting broken strength, with a white beard 
and with falling under-eyelids that made him 
look as If he were just about to cry. His eyes 
were blue and far away, and his still, mourn- 
ful face and his great bent shoulders seemed 
to suggest all the power and mystery of high 
finance. 

Gloom indeed hung over him. For, when 
one heard him talk of listed stocks and cumu- 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

lative dividends, there was as deep a tone in his 
quiet voice as if he spoke of eternal punishment 
and the wages of sin. 

Under his great hands a chattering viscount, 
or a sturdy duke, or a popinjay Italian marquis 
was as nothing. 

Mr. Boulder's methods with titled visitors 
investing money in America were deep. He 
never spoke to them of money, not a word. He 
merely talked of the great American forest — 
he had been born sixty-five years back, in a lum- 
ber state — and, when he spoke of primeval 
trees and the howl of the wolf at night among 
the pines, there was the stamp of reality about 
it that held the visitor spellbound; and when 
he fell to talking of his hunting-lodge far away 
in the Wisconsin timber, duke, earl, or baron 
that had ever handled a double-barrelled ex- 
press rifle listened and was lost. 

"I have a little place," Mr. Boulder would 
say in his deep tones that seemed almost like a 
sob, "a sort of shooting box, I think you'd call 
it, up in Wisconsin; just a plain place" — he 
would add, almost crying — *'made of logs." 

"Oh, really," the visitor would interject, 
"made of logs. By Jove, how interesting!" 

All titled people are fascinated at once with 
logs, and Mr. Boulder knew it — at least sub- 
consciously. 

"Yes, logs," he would continue, still in deep 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

sorrow; "just the plain cedar, not squared, you 
know, the old original timber; I had them cut 
right out of the forest." 

By this time the visitor's excitement was ob- 
vious. "And is there game there?" he would 
ask. 

"We have the timber wolf," said Mr. Boul- 
der, his voice half choking at the sadness of the 
thing, "and of course the jack wolf and the 
lynx." 

"And are they ferocious?" 

"Oh, extremely so — quite uncontrollable." 

On which the titled visitor was all excitement 
to start for Wisconsin at once, even before Mr. 
Boulder's invitation was put in words. 

And when he returned a week later, all 
tanned and wearing bush-whackers' boots, and 
covered with wolf bites, his whole available 
fortune was so completely invested in Mr. Boul- 
der's securities that you couldn't have shaken 
twenty-five cents out of him upside down. 

Yet the whole thing had been done merely 
incidentally — round a big fire under the Wis- 
consin timber, with a dead wolf or two lying in 
the snow. 

So no wonder that Mr. Fyshe did not pro- 
pose to invite Mr. Boulder to his little dinner. 
No, indeed. In fact, his one aim was to keep 
Mr. Boulder and his log house hidden from 
the Duke. 

23 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

And equally no wonder that as soon as Mr. 
Boulder read of the Duke's arrival in New- 
York, and saw by the Commercial Echo and 
Financial Undertone that he might come to the 
City looking for investments, he telephoned at 
once to his little place in Wisconsin — which 
had, of course, a primeval telephone wire run- 
ning to it — and told his steward to have the 
place well aired and good fires lighted; and he 
especially enjoined him to see if any of the 
shanty men thereabouts could catch a wolf or 
two, as he might need them. 

"Is no one else coming then?" asked the 
rector. 

"Oh yes. President Boomer of the Univer- 
sity. We shall be a party of four. I thought 
the Duke might be interested in meeting 
Boomer. He may care to hear something of 
the archaeological remains of the continent." 

If the Duke did so care, he certainly had a 
splendid chance in meeting the gigantic Dr. 
Boomer, the president of Plutoria University. 

If he wanted to know anything of the exact 
distinction between the Mexican Pueblo and the 
Navajo tribal house, he had his opportunity 
right now. If he was eager to hear a short 
talk — say half an hour — on the relative an- 
tiquity of the Neanderthal skull and the gravel 
deposits of the Missouri, his chance had come. 
24 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 



He could learn as much about the stone age and 
the bronze age, in America, from President 
Boomer, as he could about the gold age and 
the age of paper securities from Mr. Fyshe 
and Mr. Boulder. 

So what better man to meet a duke than an 
archaeological president? 

And if the Duke should feel inclined, as a 
result of his American visit (for Dr. Boomer, 
who knew everything, understood what the 
Duke had come for) inclined, let us say, to 
endow a chair in Primitive Anthropology, or 
do any useful little thing of the sort, that was 
only fair business all round; or if he even was 
wilHng to give a moderate sum towards the 
general fund of Plutoria University — enough, 
let us say, to enable the president to dismiss 
an old professor and hire a new one — that 
surely was reasonable enough. 

The president, therefore, had said yes to 
Mr. Fyshe's invitation with alacrity, and had 
taken a look through the list of his more in- 
competent professors to refresh his memory. 

The Duke of Dulham had landed in New 
York five days before and had looked round 
eagerly for a field of turnips, but hadn't seen 
any. He had been driven up Fifth Avenue and 
had kept his eyes open for potatoes, but there 
were none. Nor had he seen any shorthorns in 

25 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Central Park, nor any Southdowns on Broad- 
way. For the Duke, of course, like all dukes, 
was agricultural from his Norfolk jacket to 
his hobnailed boots. 

At his restaurant he had cut a potato in two 
and sent half of it to the head waiter to know 
if it was Bermudian. It had all the look of an 
early Bermudian, but the Duke feared from the 
shading of it that it might be only a late Trini- 
dad. And the head waiter sent it to the chef, 
mistaking it for a complaint, and the chef sent 
it back to the Duke with a message that it was 
not a Bermudian but a Prince Edward Island. 
And the Duke sent his compliments to the chef, 
and the chef sent his compliments to the Duke. 
And the Duke was so pleased at learning this 
that he had a similar potato wrapped up for 
him to take away, and tipped the head waiter 
twenty-five cents, feeling that in an extravagant 
country the only thing to do is to go the people 
one better. So the Duke carried the potato 
round for five days in New York and showed 
It to everybody. But beyond this he got no 
sign of agriculture out of the place at all. No 
one who entertained him seemed to know what 
the beef that they gave him had been fed on; 
no one, even In what seemed the best society, 
could talk rationally about preparing a hog 
for the breakfast table. People seemed to eat 
cauliflower without distinguishing the Denmark 
26 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

variety from the Oldenburg, and few, If any, 
knew Sileslan bacon even when they tasted it. 
And when they took the Duke out twenty-five 
miles into what was called the country, there 
were still no turnips, but only real estate, and 
railway embankments, and advertising signs; 
so that altogether the obvious and visible de- 
cline of American agriculture In what should 
have been its leading centre saddened the 
Duke's heart. Thus the Duke passed four 
gloomy days. Agricuture vexed him, and still 
more, of course, the money concerns which had 
brought him to America. 

Money is a troublesome thing. But it has 
got to be thought about even by those who were 
not brought up to it. If, on account of money 
matters, one has been driven to come over to 
America in the hope of borrowing money, the 
awkwardness of how to go about it naturally 
makes one gloomy and preoccupied. Had there 
been broad fields of turnips to walk in and Hol- 
steln cattle to punch in the ribs, one might have 
managed to borrow it in the course of gentle- 
manly intercourse, as from one cattle-man to 
another. But in New York, amid piles of 
masonry and roaring street-traflic and glitter- 
ing lunches and palatial residences, one simply 
couldn't do it. 

Herein lay the truth about the Duke of Dul- 
ham's visit and the error of Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, 
27 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Mr. Fyshe was thinking that the Duke had 
come to lend money. In reality he had come 
to borrow it. In fact, the Duke was reckoning 
that by putting a second mortgage on Dulham 
Towers for twenty thousand sterling, and by 
selling his Scotch shooting and leasing his Irish 
grazing and sub-letting his Welsh coal rent he 
could raise altogether a hundred thousand 
pounds. This, for a duke, is an enormous sum. 
If he once had it he would be able to pay off 
the first mortgage on Dulham Towers, buy in 
the rights of the present tenant of the Scotch 
shooting and the claim of the present mort- 
gagee of the Irish grazing, and in fact be just 
where he started. This is ducal finance, which 
moves always in a circle. 

In other words the Duke was really a poor 
man — not poor in the American sense, where 
poverty comes as a sudden blighting stringency, 
taking the form of an inability to get hold of a 
quarter of a million dollars, no matter how 
badly one needs it, and where it passes like a 
storm-cloud and is gone, but poor in that perma- 
nent and distressing sense known only to the 
British aristocracy. The Duke's case, of course, 
was notorious, and Mr, Fyshe ought to have 
known of it. The Duke was so poor that the 
Duchess was compelled to spend three or four 
months every year at a fashionable hotel on 
the Riviera simply to save money, and his eldest 
28 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

son, the young Marquis of Beldoodle, had to 
put in most of his time shooting big game in 
Uganda, with only twenty or twenty-five beat- 
ers, and with so few carriers and couriers and 
such a dearth of elephant men and hyena boys 
that the thing was a perfect scandal. The Duke 
indeed was so poor that a younger son, simply 
to add his efforts to those of the rest, was com- 
pelled to pass his days in mountain climbing in 
the Himalayas, and the Duke's daughter was 
obliged to pay long visits to minor German 
princesses, putting up with all sorts of hardship. 
And while the ducal family wandered about in 
this way — cHmbing mountains, and shooting 
hyenas, and saving money, the Duke's place or 
seat, Dulham Towers, was practically shut up, 
with no one in it but servants and housekeepers 
and gamekeepers and tourists; and the picture 
galleries, except for artists and visitors and vil- 
lagers, were closed; and the town house, except 
for the presence of servants and tradesmen and 
secretaries, was absolutely shut. But the Duke 
knew that rigid parsimony of this sort, if kept 
up for a generation or two, will work wonders, 
and this sustained him; and the Duchess knew 
it, and it sustained her; in fact, all the ducal 
family, knowing that it was only a matter of a 
generation or two, took their misfortune very 
cheerfully. 

The only thing that bothered the Duke was 
29 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

borrowing money. This was necessary from 
time to time when loans or mortgages fell in, 
but he hated it. It was beneath him. His an- 
cestors had often taken money, but had never 
borrowed it, and the Duke chafed under the 
necessity. There was something about the 
process that went against the grain. To sit 
down in pleasant converse with a man, perhaps 
almost a gentleman, and then lead up to the 
subject and take his money from him, seemed to 
the Duke's mind essentially low. He could 
have understood knocking a man over the head 
with a fire shovel and taking his money, but 
not borrowing it. 

So the Duke had come to America, where 
borrowing is notoriously easy. Any member of 
the Mausoleum Club, for instance, would bor- 
row fifty cents to buy a cigar, or fifty thousand 
dollars to buy a house, or five millions to buy a 
railroad with complete indifference, and pay it 
back, too, if he could, and think nothing of it. 
In fact, ever so many of the Duke's friends 
were known to have borrowed money in Amer- 
ica with magical ease, pledging for it their seats 
or their pictures, or one of their daughters — 
anything. 

So the Duke knew it must be easy. And yet, 

incredible as it may seem, he had spent four 

days in New York, entertained everywhere, and 

made much of, and hadn't borrowed a cent. He 

30 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

had been asked to lunch In a Riverside palace, 
and, fool that he was, had come away without 
so much as a dollar to show for it. He had 
been asked to a country house on the Hudson, 
and, like an idiot — he admitted it himself — 
hadn't asked his host for as much as his train 
fare. He had been driven twice round Central 
Park In a motor and had been taken tamely 
back to his hotel not a dollar the richer. The 
thing was childish, and he knew it. But to 
save his life the Duke didn't know how to be- 
gin. None of the things that he was able to 
talk about seemed to have the remotest connec- 
tion with the subject of money. The Duke was 
able to converse reasonably well over such top- 
ics as the approaching downfall of England 
(they had talked of it at Dulham Towers for 
sixty years), or over the duty of England to- 
ward China, or the duty of England to Persia, 
or its duty to aid the Young Turk Movement, 
and Its duty to check the Old Servia agitation. 
The Duke became so interested in these topics 
and in explaining that while he had never been 
a Little Englander he had always been a Big 
: Turk, and that he stood for a Small Bulgaria 
' and a Restricted Austria, that he got further 
and further away from the topic of money, 
which was what he really wanted to come to; 
1 and the Duke rose from his conversations with 
j a look of such obvious distress on his face that 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

everybody realised that his anxiety about Eng- 
land was killing him. 

And then suddenly light had come. It was 
on his fourth day in New York that he unex- 
pectedly ran into the Viscount Belstairs (they 
had been together as young men in Nigeria, 
and as middle-aged men in St. Petersburg), 
and Belstairs, who was in abundant spirits and 
who was returning to England on the Glori- 
tania at noon the next day, explained to the 
Duke that he had just borrowed fifty thousand 
pounds, on security that wouldn't be worth a 
halfpenny in England. 

And the Duke said with a sigh, "How the 
deuce do you do it, Belstairs?" 

"Do what?" 

"Borrow it," said the Duke. "How do you 
manage to get people to talk about it? Here I 
am wanting to borrow a hundred thousand, and 
I'm hanged if I can even find an opening." 

At which the Viscount had said, "Pooh, 
pooh! you don't need any opening. Just bor- 
row it straight out — ask for it across a dinner 
table, just as you'd ask for a match; they think 
nothing of it here." 

"Across the dinner table?" repeated the 
Duke, who was a literal man. 

"Certainly," said the Viscount. "Not too 
soon, you know — say after a second glass of 
wine. I assure you it's absolutely nothing." 
i2 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

And it was just at that moment that a tele- 
gram was handed to the Duke from Mr. Lucul- 
lus Fyshe, praying him, as he was reported to 
be visiting the next day the City where the 
Mausoleum Club stands, to make acquaintance 
with him by dining at that institution. 

And the Duke, being as I say a literal man, 
decided that just as soon as Mr. Fyshe should 
give him a second glass of wine, that second 
glass should cost Mr. Fyshe a hundred thousand 
pounds sterling. 

And oddly enough, at about the same mo- 
ment, Mr. Fyshe was calculating that provided 
he could make the Duke drink a second glass of 
the Mausoleum champagne, that glass would 
cost the Duke about five million dollars. 

So the very morning after that the Duke had 
arrived on the New York express in the City; 
and being an ordinary, democratic, commercial 
sort of place, absorbed in its own affairs, it 
made no fuss over him whatever. The morn- 
ing edition of the Pliitopian Citizen simply said, 
"We understand that the Duke of Dulham ar- 
rives at the Grand Palaver this morning," after 
which it traced the Duke's pedigree back to 
Jock of Ealing in the twelfth century and let 
the matter go at that; and the noon edition of 
the People's Advocate merely wrote, "We learn 
that Duke Dulham is in town. He is a relation 

22, 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

of Jack Ealing." But the Commercial Echo 
and Financial Undertone, appearing at four 
o'clock, printed in its stock market columns the 
announcement : "We understand that the Duke 
of Dulham, who arrives in town to-day, is pro- 
posing to invest a large sum of money in Ameri- 
can Industrials." 

And of course that announcement reached 
every member of the Mausoleum Club within 
twenty minutes. 

The Duke of Dulham entered the Mauso- 
leum Club that evening at exactly seven of the 
clock. He was a short, thick man with a shaven 
face, red as a brick, and grizzled hair, and 
from the look of him he could have got a job 
at sight in any lumber camp in Wisconsin. He 
wore a dinner jacket, just like an ordinary per- 
son, but even without his Norfolk coat and his 
hobnailed boots there was something in the way 
in which he walked up the long main hall of the 
Mausoleum Club that every imported waiter 
in the place recognised in an instant. 

The Duke cast his eye about the club and 
approved of it. It seemed to him a modest, 
quiet place, very different from the staring os- 
tentation that one sees too often in a German 
hof or an Italian palazzo. He liked it. 

Mr. Fyshe and Mr. Furlong were standing 
in a deep alcove or bay where there was a fire 

34 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

and india-rubber trees and pictures with shaded 
lights and a whiskey-and-soda table. There 
the Duke joined them. Mr. Fyshe he had met 
already that afternoon at the Palaver, and he 
called him "Fyshe" as if he had known him 
forever; and indeed, after a few minutes he 
called the rector of St. Asaph's simply "Fur- 
long," for he had been familiar with the Angli- 
can clergy in so many parts of the world that 
he knew that to attribute any peculiar godliness 
to them, socially, was the worst possible taste. 

"By Jove," said the Duke, turning to tap the 
leaf of a rubber-tree with his finger, "that fel- 
low's a Nigerian, isn't he?" 

"I hardly know," said Mr. Fyshe, "I imagine 
so"; and he added, "You've been in Nigeria, 
Duke?" 

"Oh, some years ago," said the Duke, "after 
big game, you know — fine place for it." 

"Did you get any?" asked Mr. Fyshe. 

"Not much," said the Duke; "a hippo or 
two." 

"Ah," said Mr. Fyshe. 

"And, of course, now and then a giro," the 
Duke went on, and added, "My sister was luck- 
ier, though; she potted a rhino one day, straight 
out of a doolie; I call that rather good." 

Mr. Fyshe called it that too. 

"Ah, now here's a good thing," the Duke 
went on, looking at a picture. He carried in his 
35 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

waist-coat pocket an eyeglass that he used for 
pictures and for Tamworth hogs, and he put it 
to his eye with one hand, keeping the other in 
the left pocket of his jacket; "and this — this is 
a very good thing," 

"I believe so," said Mr. Fyshe. 

"You really have some awfully good things 
here," continued the Duke. He had seen far 
too many pictures in too many places ever to 
speak of "values" or "compositions" or any- 
thing of that sort. The Duke merely looked at 
a picture and said, "Now here's a good thing," 
or "Ah! here now is a very good thing," or, 
"I say, here's a really good thing." 

No one could get past this sort of criticism. 
The Duke had long since found it bullet-proof. 

"They showed me some rather good things 
In New York," he went on, "but really the 
things you have here seem to be awfully good 
things." 

Indeed, the Duke was truly pleased with the 
pictures, for something In their composition, 
or else In the soft, expensive light that shone on 
them, enabled him to see in the distant back- 
ground of each a hundred thousand sterling 
And that is a very beautiful picture indeed. 

"When you come to our side of the water, 
Fyshe," said the Duke, "I must show you my 
Botticelli." 

Had Mr. Fyshe, who knew nothing of art, 
36 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

expressed his real thought, he would have said, 
"Show me your which ?" But he only answered, 
"I shall be delighted to see it." 

In any case there was no time to say more, 
for at this moment the portly figure and the 
great face of Dr. Boomer, president of Plutoria 
University, loomed upon them. And with him 
came a great burst of conversation that blew 
all previous topics into fragments. He was in- 
troduced to the Duke, and shook hands with 
Mr. Furlong, and talked to both of them, and 
named the kind of cocktail that he wanted, all 
in one breath, and in the very next he was ask- 
ing the Duke about the Babylonian hieroglyphic 
bricks that his grandfather, the thirteenth 
Duke, had brought home from the Euphrates, 
and which every archaeologist knew were pre- 
served in the Duke's library at Dulham Towers. 
And though the Duke hadn't known about the 
bricks himself, he assured Dr. Boomer that his 
grandfather had collected some really good 
things, quite remarkable. 

And the Duke, having met a man who knew 
about his grandfather, felt in his own element. 
In fact, he was so delighted with Dr. Boomer 
and the Nigerian rubber-tree and the shaded 
pictures and thq charm of the whole place and 
the certainty that half a million dollars was 
easily findable in it, that he put his eye-glass 
back in his pocket and said, 
37 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"A charming club you have here, really most 
charming." 

"Yes," said Mr. Fyshe, in a casual tone, "a 
comfortable place, we like to think." 

But if he could have seen what was happen- 
ing below in the kitchens of the Mausoleum 
Club, Mr. Fyshe would have realised that just 
then it was turning into a most uncomfortable 
place. 

For the walking delegate with his hat on side- 
ways, who had haunted it all day, was busy now 
among the assembled Chinese philosophers, 
writing down names and distributing strikers' 
cards of the International Union and assuring 
them that the "boys" of the Grand Palaver had 
all walked out at seven, and that all the "boys" 
of the Commercial and the Union and of every 
restaurant in town were out an hour ago. 

And the philosophers were taking their cards 
and hanging up their waiters' coats and putting 
on shabby jackets and bowler hats, worn side- 
ways, and changing themselves by a wonderful 
transformation from respectable Chinese to 
slouching loafers of the lowest type. 

But Mr. Fyshe, being in an alcove and not in 
the kitchens, saw nothing of these things. Not 
even when the head waiter, shaking with ap- 
prehension, appeared with cocktails made by 
himselt, in glasses that he himself had had to 
wipe, did Mr. Fyshe, absorbed in the easy 
38 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

urbanity of the Duke, notice that anything was 
amiss. 

Neither did his guests. For Dr. Boomer, 
having discovered that the Duke had visited 
Nigeria, was asking him his opinion of the 
famous Bimbaweh remains of the lower Niger. 
The Duke confessed that he really hadn't no- 
ticed them, and the Doctor assured him that 
Strabo had indubitably mentioned them (he 
would show the Duke the very passage), and 
that they apparently lay, if his memory served 
him, about half-way between Oohat and Ohat; 
whether above Oohat and below Ohat or above 
Ohat and below Oohat he would not care to 
say for a certainty; for that the Duke must wait 
till the president had time to consult his hbrary. 

And the Duke was fascinated forthwith with 
the president's knowledge of Nigerian geog- 
raphy, and explained that he had once actually 
descended from below Tlm.buctoo to Oohat in 
a doolie manned only by four swats. 

So presently, having drunk the cocktails, the 
party moved solemnly in a body from the al- 
cove towards the private dining-room upstairs, 
still busily talking of the Bimbaweh remains, 
and the swats, and whether the doolie was, or 
was not, the original goatskin boat of the book 
of Genesis. 

And when they entered the private dining- 
room with its snow-white table and cut glass 
39 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

and flowers (as arranged by a retreating phil- 
osopher now heading towards the Gaiety The- 
atre with his hat over his eyes) , the Duke again 
exclaimed, 

"Really, you have a most comfortable club — 
delightful." 

So they sat down to dinner, over which Mr. 
Furlong offered up a grace as short as any that 
are known even to the Anglican clergy. And 
the head waiter, now in deep distress — for he 
had been sending out telephone messages in 
vain to the Grand Palaver and the Continental, 
like the captain of a sinking ship — served oys- 
ters that he had opened himself and poured 
Rhine wine with a trembling hand. For he 
knew that unless by magic a new chef and a 
waiter or two could be got from the Palaver, 
all hope was lost. 

But the guests still knew nothing of his fears. 
Dr. Boomer was eating his oysters as a Niger- 
ian hippo might eat up the crew of a doolie, in 
great mouthfuls, and commenting as he did so 
upon the luxuriousness of modern life. 

And in the pause that followed the oysters 
he illustrated foi the Duke with two pieces of 
bread the essential difference in structure be- 
tween the Mexican pueblo and the tribal house 
of the Navajos, and lest the Duke should con- 
found either or both of them with the adobe 
40 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

hut of the Bimbaweh tribes he showed the dif- 
ference at once with a couple of olives. 

By this time, of course, the delay in the ser- 
vice was getting noticeable. Mr. Fyshe was 
directing angry glances towards the door, look- 
ing for the reappearance of the waiter, and 
growHng an apology to his guests. But the 
president waved the apology aside. 

"In my college days," he said, "I should 
have considered a plate of oysters an ample 
meal. I should have asked for nothing more. 
We eat," he said, "too much." 

This, of course, started Mr. Fyshe on his 
favourite topic, "Luxury!" he exclaimed, "I 
should think so! It is the curse of the age. 
The appalling growth of luxury, the piling up 
of money, the ease with which huge fortunes 
are made" (Good! thought the Duke, here we 
are comJng to it), "these are the things that 
are going to ruin us. Mark my words, the 
whole thing is bound to end in a tremendous 
crash. I don't mind telling you, Duke — my 
friends here, I am sure, know it already — that 
I am more or less a revolutionary socialist. I 
am absolutely convinced, sir, that our modern 
civilisation will end in a great social catastrophe. 
Mark what I say" — and here Mr. Fyshe be- 
came exceedingly impressive — "a great social 
catastrophe. Some of us may not live to see it, 
41 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

perhaps; but you, for Instance, Furlong, are a 
younger man; you certainly will." 

But here Mr. Fyshe was understating the 
case. They were all going to live to see it, 
right on the spot. 

For it was just at this moment, when Mr. 
Fyshe was talking of the social catastrophe and 
explaining with flashing eyes that it was bound 
to come, that it came; and when it came it lit, 
of all places in the world, right there in the 
private dining-room of the Mausoleum Club. 

For the gloomy head waiter re-entered and 
leaned over the back of Mr, Fyshe's chair and 
whispered to him. 

"Eh? what?" said Mr. Fyshe. 

The head waiter, his features stricken with 
Inward agony, whispered again. » 

"The infernal, damn scoundrels!" said Mr. 
Fyshe, starting back in his chair. "On strike: 
In this club! It's an outrage!" 

"I'm very sorry, sir. I didn't like to tell you, 
sir. I'd hoped I might have got help from the 
outside, but it seems, sir, the hotels are all the 
same way." 

"Do you mean to say," said Mr. Fyshe, 
speaking very slowly, "that there is no dinner?" 

"I'm sorry, sir," moaned the waiter. "It 
appears the chef hadn't even cooked It. Be- 
yond what's on the table, sir, there's nothing." 

The social catastrophe had come. 
42 



Arcadian Adventures tcith the Idle Rich 

Mr. Fyshe sat silent with his fist clenched. 
Dr. Boomer, with his great face transfixed, 
stared at the empty oyster-shells, thinking per- 
haps of his college days. The Duke, with his 
hundred thousand dashed from his lips in the 
second cup of champagne that was never served, 
thought of his politeness first and murmured 
something about taking them to his hotel. 

But there is no need to follow the unhappy 
details of the unended dinner. Mr. Fyshe's 
one idea was to be gone: he was too true an 
artist to think that finance could be carried on 
over the table-cloth of a second-rate restaurant, 
or on an empty stomach in a deserted club. The 
thing must be done over again; he must wait his 
time and begin anew. 

And so it came about that the little dinner- 
party of Mr. Lucullus Fyshe dissolved itself 
into its constituent elements, like broken pieces 
of society in the great cataclysm portrayed by 
Mr. Fyshe himself. 

The Duke was bowled home in a snorting 
motor to the brilliant rotunda of the Grand 
Palaver, itself waiterless and supperless. 

The rector of St. Asaph's wandered off home 
to his rectory, musing upon the contents of its 
pantry. 

And Mr. Fyshe and the gigantic Doctor 
walked side by side homewards along Plutoria 
Avenue, beneath the elm trees. 
43 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Nor had they gone any great distance before 
Dr. Boomer fell to talking of the Duke. 

"A charming man," he said, "delightful. I 
feel extremely sorry for him." 

"No worse off, I presume, than any of the 
rest of us," growled Mr. Fyshe, who was feel- 
ing in the sourest of democratic moods; "a man 
doesn't need to be a duke to have a stomach." 

"Oh, pooh, pooh!" said the president, wav- 
ing the topic aside with his hand in the air; "I 
don't refer to that. Oh, not at all. I was 
thinking of his financial position — an ancient 
family like the Dulhams; it seems too bad al- 
together." 

For, of course, to an achseologist like Dr. 
Boomer an intimate acquaintance with the pedi- 
gree and fortunes of the greater ducal families 
from Jock of Ealing downwards was nothing. 
It went without saying. As beside the Neander- 
thal skull and the Bimbaweh ruins It didn't 
count. 

Mr. Fyshe stopped absolutely still in his 
tracks. "His financial position?" he questioned, 
quick as a lynx. 

"Certainly," said Dr. Boomer; "I had taken 
it for granted that you knew. The Dulham 
family are practically ruined. The Duke, I 
imagine, is under the necessity of mortgaging 
his estates; indeed, I should suppose he Is here 
in America to raise money." 
44 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Mr. Fyshe was a man of lightning action. 
Any man accustomed to the Stock Exchange 
learns to think quickly. 

"One moment!" he cried; "I see we are right 
at your door. May I just run in and use your 
telephone? I want to call up Boulder for a 
moment." 

Two minutes later Mr. Fyshe was saying into 
the telephone, "Oh, is that you, Boulder? I 
was looking for you in vain to-day — wanted 
you to meet the Duke of Dulham, who came in 
quite unexpectedly from New York; felt sure 
you'd like to meet him. Wanted you at the 
club for dinner, and now it turns out that the 
club's all upset — waiters' strike or some such 
rascality — and the Palaver, so I hear, is in the 
same fix. Could you possibly " 

Here Mr. Fyshe paused, listening a moment 
and then went on, "Yes, yes; an excellent idea 
— most kind of you. Pray do send your motor 
to the hotel and give the Duke a bite of dinner. 
No, I won't join you, thanks. Most kind. 
Good-night " 

And within a few minutes more the motor of 
Mr. Boulder was rolling down from Plutoria 
Avenue to the Grand Palaver Hotel. 

What passed between Mr. Boulder and the 
Duke that evening is not known. That they 
must have proved congenial company to one 
45 



Arcadian Adventures tvith the Idle Rich 

another there is no doubt. In fact, It would 
seem that, dissimilar as they were in many 
ways, they found a common bond of interest in 
sport. And it is quite likely that Mr. Boulder 
may have mentioned that he had a hunting- 
lodge — what the Duke would call a shooting- 
box — in Wisconsin woods, and that it was made 
of logs, rough cedar logs not squared, and that 
the timber wolves and others which surrounded 
it were of a ferocity without parallel. 

Those who know the Duke best could meas- 
ure the effect of that upon his temperament. 

At any rate, it is certain that Mr. Lucullus 
Fyshe at his breakfast-table next morning 
chuckled with suppressed joy to read in the 
Pliitopian Citizen the item : 

"We learn that the Duke of Dulham, who 
has been paying a brief visit to the City, leaves 
this morning with Mr. Asmodeus Boulder for 
the Wisconsin woods. We understand that 
Mr. Boulder intends to show his guest, v/ho is 
an ardent sportsman, something of the Ameri- 
can wolf." 

And so the Duke went whirling westwards 
and northwards with Mr. Boulder in the draw- 
ing-room end of a Pullman car, that was all lit- 
tered up with double-barrelled express rifles 
and leather game bags, and lynx catchers and 
wolf traps and Heaven knows what. And the 
46 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Duke had on his very roughest sporting suit, 
made, apparently, of alligator hide; and as he 
sat there with a rifle across his knees, while the 
train swept onward through open fields and 
broken woods, the real country at last, towards 
the Wisconsin forest, there v/as such a light of 
genial happiness in his face that had not been 
seen there since he had been marooned in the 
mud jungles of Upper Burmah. 

And opposite, Mr. Boulder looked at him 
with fixed, silent eyes, and murmured from time 
to time some renewed information of the feroc- 
ity of the timber wolf. 

But of wolves other than the timber wolf, 
and fiercer still, into whose hands the Duke 
might fall in America, he spoke never a word. 

Nor is it known in the record what happened 
in Wisconsin, and to the Mausoleum Club the 
Duke and his visit remained only as a passing 
and a pleasant memory. 



47 



Chapter II, — The Wizard of Finance 



DOWN in the City itself, just below the 
residential street where the Mauso- 
leum Club is situated, there stands 
overlooking Central Square the 
Grand Palaver Hotel. It is, in truth, at no 
great distance from the club, not half a minute 
in one's motor. In fact, one could almost 
walk it. 

But in Central Square the quiet of Plutoria 
Avenue is exchanged for another atmosphere. 
There are fountains that splash unendingly and 
mingle their music with the sound of the motor- 
horns and the clatter of the cabs. There are 
real trees and little green benches, with people 
reading yesterday's newspaper, and grass cut 
into plots among the asphalt. There is at one 
end a statue of the first governor of the state, 
life-size, cut in stone; and at the other a statue 
of the last, ever so much larger than life, cast 
in bronze. And all the people who pass by 
pause and look at this statue and point at it with 
walking sticks, because it is of extraordinary 
interest; in fact, it is an example of the new 
electro-chemical process of casting by which you 
a8 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

can cast a state governor any size you like, no 
matter what you start from. Those who know 
about such things explain what an interesting 
contrast the two statues are; for in the case of 
the governor of a hundred years ago one had to 
start from plain, rough material and work pa- 
tiently for years to get the effect, whereas now 
the material doesn't matter at all, and with any 
sort of scrap, treated in the gas furnace under 
tremendous pressure, one may make a figure of 
colossal size like the one in Central Square. 

So naturally Central Square with Its trees 
and Its fountains and its statues is one of the 
places of chief Interest In the City. But espe- 
cially because there stands along one side of It 
the vast pile of the Grand Palaver Hotel. It 
rises fifteen stories high and fills all one side 
of the square. It has, overlooking the trees in 
the square, twelve hundred rooms with three 
thousand windows, and it would have held all 
George Washington's army. Even people In 
other cities who have never seen it know it well 
from its advertising; "the most homelike hotel 
In America," so it is labelled in all the maga- 
zines, the expensive ones, on the continent. In 
fact, the aim of the company that owns the 
Grand Palaver — and they do not attempt to 
conceal it — is to make the place as much a home 
as possible. Therein lies its charm. It is a 
home. You realise that when you look up at 
49 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

the Grand Palaver from the square at night 
when the twelve hundred guests have turned 
on the lights of the three thousand windows. 
You realise it at theatre time when the great 
strings of motors come sweeping to the doors 
of the Palaver, to carry the twelve hundred 
guests to twelve hundred seats In the theatres 
at four dollars a seat. But most of all do you 
appreciate the character of the Grand Palaver 
when you step into Its rotunda. Aladdin's 
enchanted palace was nothing to It. It has a 
vast ceiling with a hundred glittering lights, and 
within It night and day Is a surging crowd that 
is never still and a babel of voices that Is never 
hushed, and over all there hangs an enchanted 
cloud of thin blue tobacco smoke such as might 
enshroud the conjured vision of a magician of 
Bagdad or Damascus. 

In and through the rotunda there are palm- 
trees to rest the eye and rubber-trees in boxes 
to soothe the mind, and there are great leather 
lounges and deep arm-chairs, and here and 
there huge brass ash-bowls as big as Etruscan 
tear-jugs. Along one side is a counter with 
grated wickets like a bank, and behind it are 
five clerks with flattened hair and tall collars, 
dressed In long black frock-coats all day like 
members of a legislature. They have great 
books in front of them In which they study un- 
ceasingly, and at their lightest thought they 
so 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

strike a bell with the open palm of their hand, 
and at the sound of it a page boy in a monkey 
suit, with G. P. stamped all over him in brass, 
bounds to the desk and off again, shouting a 
call into the unheeding crowd vociferously. The 
sound of it fills for a moment the great space 
of the rotunda ; it echoes down the corridors to 
the side; it floats, softly melodious, through the 
palm-trees of the ladies' palm room; it is heard, 
fainter and fainter, in the distant grill, and in 
the depths of the barber shop below the level 
of the street the barber arrests a moment the 
drowsy hum of his shampoo brushes to catch 
the sound — as might a miner in the sunken gal- 
leries of a coastal mine cease In his toil a mo- 
ment to hear the distant murmur of the sea. 

And the clerks call for the pages, the pages 
call for the guests, and the guests call for the 
porters, the bells clang, the elevators rattle, 
till home Itself was never half so home-like. 

"A call for Mr. Tomllnson ! A call for Mr. 
Tomhnson 1" 

So went the sound, echoing through the ro- 
tunda. 

And as the page boy found him and handed 
him on a salver a telegram to read, the eyes of 
the crowd about him turned for a moment to 
look upon the figure of Tomlinson, the Wizard 
of Finance. 

51 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

There he stood in his wide-awake hat and his 
long black coat, his shoulders slightly bent with 
his fifty-eight years. Anyone who had known 
him in the olden days on his bush farm beside 
Tomlinson's Creek in the country of the Great 
Lakes would have recognised him in a moment. 
There was still on his face that strange, puzzled 
look that it habitually wore, only now, of course, 
the financial papers were calling it "unfathom- 
able." There was a certain way in which his 
eye roved to and fro inquiringly that might 
have looked like perplexity, were it not that 
the Financial Undertone had recognised it as 
the "searching look of a captain of industry." 
One might have thought that for all the good- 
ness in it there was something simple in his face, 
were it not that the Commercial and Pictorial 
Review had called the face "inscrutable," and 
had proved it so with an illustration that left 
no doubt of the matter. Indeed, the face of 
Tomlinson of Tomlinson's Creek, now Tom- 
linson the Wizard of Finance, was not com- 
monly spoken of as a face by the paragraphers 
of the Saturday magazine sections, but was 
more usually referred to as a mask; and it 
would appear that Napoleon the First had had 
one also. The Saturday editors were never 
tired of describing the strange, impressive per- 
sonality of Tomlinson, the great dominating 
character of the newest and highest finance. 

52 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

From the moment when the interim prospectus 
of the Erie Auriferous Consolidated had broken 
like a tidal wave over Stock Exchange circles, 
the picture of Tomlinson, the sleeping share- 
holder of uncomputed millions, had filled the im- 
agination of every dreamer in a nation of poets. 

They all described him. And when each had 
finished he began again. 

"The face," so wrote the editor of the "Our 
Own Men" section of Ourselves Monthly, "is 
that of a typical American captain of finance, 
hard, yet with a certain softness, broad but with 
a certain length, ductile but not without its own 
firmness." 

"The mouth," so wrote the editor of the 
"Success" column of Brains, "is strong but pli- 
able, the jaw firm and yet movable, while there 
is something in the set of the ear that suggests 
the swift, eager mind of the born leader of 
men." 

So from state to state ran the portrait of 
Tomlinson of Tomlinson's Creek, drawn by 
people who had never seen him; so did it reach 
out and cross the ocean, till the French journals 
inserted a picture which they used for such oc- 
casions, and called it Monsieur Tomlinson, 
nouveau capitaine de la haute finance en 
Amerique; and the German weeklies, inserting 
also a suitable picture from their stock, marked 
it Herr Tomlinson, Amerikanischer Industrte- 

53 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

und Finanzcapitdn. Thus did Tomlinson float 
from Tomlinson's Creek beside Lake Erie to 
the very banks of the Danube and the Drave. 

Some writers grew lyric about him. What 
visions, they asked, could one but read them, 
must lie behind the quiet, dreaming eyes of that 
inscrutable face? 

They might have read them easily enough, 
had they but had the key. Anyone who looked 
upon Tomlinson as he stood there in the roar 
and clatter of the great rotunda of the Grand 
Palaver with the telegram in his hand, fumbhng 
at the wrong end to open it, might have read the 
visions of the master-mind had he but known 
their nature. They were simple enough. For 
the visions in the mind of Tomlinson, Wizard 
of Finance, were for the most part those of a 
wind-swept hillside farm beside Lake Erie, 
where Tomlinson's Creek runs down to the low 
edge of the lake, and where the off-shore wind 
ripples the rushes of the shallow water: that, 
and the vision of a frame house, and the snake 
fences of the fourth concession road where it 
falls to the lakeside. And if the eyes of the 
man are dreamy and abstracted, it is because 
there lies over the vision of this vanished farm 
an infinite regret, greater in its compass than 
all the shares the Erie Auriferous Consolidated 
has ever thrown upon the market. 



54 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

When Tomllnson had opened the telegram 
he stood with it for a moment in his hand, look- 
ing the boy full in the face. His look had in it 
that peculiar far-away quality that the news- 
papers were calling "Napoleonic abstraction." 
In reality he was wondering whether to give the 
boy twenty-five cents or fifty. 

The message that he had just read was 
worded, "Morning quotations show preferred 
A. G. falling rapidly recommend instant sale 
no confidence send instructions." 

The Wizard of Finance took from his pocket 
a pencil (it was a carpenter's pencil) and wrote 
across the face of the message, 

"Buy me quite a bit more of the same yours 
truly." 

This he gave to the boy. "Take it over to 
him," he said, pointing to the telegraph corner 
of the rotunda. Then after another pause he 
mumbled, "Here, sonny," and gave the boy a 
dollar. 

With that he turned to walk towards the ele- 
vator, and all the people about him who had 
watched the signing of the message knew that 
some big financial deal was going through — a 
coup, in fact, they called it. 

The elevator took the Wizard to the second 

floor. As he went up he felt in his pocket and 

gripped a quarter, then changed his mind and 

felt for a fifty-cent piece, and finally gave them 

55 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

both to the elevator boy, after which he walked 
along the corridor till he reached the corner 
suite of rooms, a palace in itself, for which he 
was paying a thousand dollars a month ever 
since the Erie Auriferous Consolidated Com- 
pany had begun tearing up the bed of Tomlin- 
son's Creek in Cahoga County with its hy- 
draulic dredges. 

"Well, mother," he said as he entered. 

There was a woman seated near the window, 
a woman with a plain, homely face such as they 
wear in the farm kitchens of Cahoga County, 
and a set of fashionable clothes upon her such 
as they sell to the ladies of Plutoria Avenue. 

This was 'mother,' the wife of the Wizard 
of Finance and eight years younger than him- 
self. And she too was in the papers and the 
public eye; and whatsoever the shops had fresh 
from Paris, at fabulous prices, that they sold 
to mother. They had put a Balkan hat upon 
her with an upright feather, and they had hung 
gold chains on her, and everything that was 
most expensive they had hung and tied on 
mother. You might see her emerging any morn- 
ing from the Grand Palaver in her beetle-back 
jacket and her Balkan hat, a figure of infinite 
pathos. And whatever she wore, the lady ed- 
itors of Spring Notes and Causcrie dii Boudoir 
wrote it out in French, and one paper had called 
her a belle chatelaine, and another had spoken 
56 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

of her as a grande dame, which the Tomllnsons 
thought must be a misprint. 

But in any case, for Tomllnson the Wizard 
of Finance it was a great relief to have as his 
wife a woman like mother, because he knew that 
she had taught school in Cahoga County and 
could hold her own in the city with any of 
them. 

So mother spent her time sitting in her beetle 
jacket in the thousand-dollar suite, reading new 
novels in brilliant paper covers. And the Wiz- 
ard on his trips up and down to the rotunda 
brought her the very best, the ones that cost a 
dollar fifty, because he knew that out home she 
had only been able to read books like Nathaniel 
Hawthorne and Walter Scott, that were only 
worth ten cents. 

"How's Fred?" said the Wizard, laying aside 
his hat, and looking towards the closed door of 
an inner room. "Is he better?" 

"Some," said mother. "He's dressed, but 
he's lying down." 

Fred was the son of the Wizard and mother. 
In the inner room he lay on a sofa, a great 
hulking boy of seventeen in a flowered dressing- 
gown, fancying himself ill. There was a packet 
of cigarettes and a box of chocolates on a chair 
beside him, and he had the blind drawn and his 
eyes half-closed to impress himself. 
57 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Yet this was the same boy that less than a 
year ago on Tomlinson's Creek had worn a 
rough store suit and set his sturdy shoulders to 
the buck-saw. At present Fortune was busy 
taking from him the golden gifts which the 
fairies of Cahoga County, Lake Erie, had laid 
in his cradle seventeen years ago. 

The Wizard tip-toed into the inner room, 
and from the open door his listening wife could 
hear the voice of the boy saying, in a tone as of 
one distraught with suffering: 

"Is there any more of that jelly?" 

"Could he have any, do you suppose?" asked 
Tomlinson coming back. 

"It's all right," said mother, "if it will sit 
on his stomach." 

For this, in the dietetics of Cahoga County, 
is the sole test. All those things can be eaten 
which will sit on the stomach. Anything that 
won't sit there is not eatable. 

"Do you suppose I could get them to get 
any?" questioned Tomlinson. "Would it be all 
right to telephone down to the office, or do you 
think it would be better to ring?" 

"Perhaps," said his wife, "it would be better 
to look out into the hall and see if there isn't 
someone round that would tell them." 

This was the kind of problem with which 
Tomlinson and his wife, in their thousand-dol- 
lar suite in the Grand Palaver, grappled all 
S8 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

day. And when presently a tall waiter in dress- 
clothes appeared, and said, "Jelly? Yes, sir, 
immediately, sir; would you like, sir. Mara- 
schino, sir, or Portovino, sir?" Tomlinson 
gazed at him gloomily, wondering if he would 
take five dollars. 

"What does the doctor say is wrong with 
Fred?" asked Tomlinson, when the waiter had 
gone. 

"He don't just say," said mother; "he said 
he must keep very quiet. He looked in this 
morning for a minute or two, and he said he'd 
look in later in the day again. But he said to 
keep Fred very quiet." 

Exactly! In other words Fred had pretty 
much the same complaint as the rest of Dr. 
Slyder's patients on Plutoria Avenue, and was 
to be treated in the same way. Dr. Slyder, 
who was the most fashionable practitioner in 
the City, spent his entire time moving to and 
fro in an almost noiseless motor earnestly ad- 
vising people to keep quiet. "You must keep 
very quiet for a little while," he would say with 
a sigh, as he sat beside a sick-bed. As he drew 
on his gloves in the hall below he would shake 
his head very impressively and say, "You must 
keep him very quiet," and so pass out, quite 
soundlessly. By this means Dr. Slyder often 
succeeded in keeping people quiet for weeks. 
It was all the medicine that he knew. But it 
59 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

was enough. And as his patients always got 
well — there being nothing wrong with them — 
his reputation was immense. 

Very naturally the Wizard and his wife were 
impressed with him. They had never seen such 
therapeutics in Cahoga County, where the prac- 
tice of medicine is carried on with forceps, 
pumps, squirts, splints, and other instruments 
of violence. 

The waiter had hardly gone when a boy ap- 
peared at the door. This time he presented 
to Tomlinson not one telegram but a little bun- 
dle of them. 

The Wizard read them with a lengthening 
face. The first ran something like this, "Con- 
gratulate you on your daring market turned 
instantly" ; and the next, "Your opinion justi- 
fied market rose have sold at 20 points profit"; 
and a third, "Your forecast entirely correct 
C. P. rose at once send further instructions." 

These and similar messages were from brok- 
ers' offices, and all of them were in the same 
tone; one told him that C. P. was up, and an- 
other T. G. P. had passed 129, and another 
that T. C. R. R, had risen ten — all of which 
things were imputed to the wonderful sagacity 
of Tomlinson. Whereas if they had told him 
that X. Y. Z. had risen to the moon he would 
have been just as wise as to what it meant. 

"Well," said the wife of the Wizard as her 
60 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

husband finished looking through the reports, 
"how are things this morning? Are they any- 
better ?" 

"No," said Tomlinson, and he sighed as he 
said it; "this is the worst day yet. It's just been 
a shower of telegrams, and mostly all the same. 
I can't do the figuring of it lilce you can, but I 
reckon I must have made another hundred thou- 
sand dollars since yesterday." 

"You don't say so!" said mother, and they 
looked at one another gloomily. 

"And half a million last week, wasn't it?" 
said Tomlinson as he sank into a chair. "I'm 
afraid, mother," he continued, "it's no good. 
We don't know how. We weren't brought up 
to it." 

All of which meant that if the editor of the 
Monetary Afternoon or Financial Sunday had 
been able to know what was happening with 
the two wizards, he could have written up a 
news story calculated to electrify all America. 

For the truth was that Tomlinson, the Wizard 
of Finance, was attempting to carry out a coup 
greater than any as yet attributed to him by the 
Press. He was trying to lose his money. That, 
in the sickness of his soul, crushed by the Grand 
Palaver, overwhelmed with the burden of high 
finance, had become his aim, to be done with it, 
to get rid of his whole fortune. 

But if you own a fortune that is computed 
6i 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

anywhere from fifty millions up, with no limit 
at the top, if you own one-half of all the pre- 
ferred stock of an Erie Auriferous Consoli- 
dated that is digging gold in hydraulic bucket- 
fuls from a quarter of a mile of river bed, the 
task of losing it is no easy matter. 

There are men, no doubt, versed in finance, 
who might succeed in doing it. But they have 
a training that Tomlinson lacked. Invest it as 
he would in the worst securities that offered, 
the most rickety of stock, the most fraudulent 
bonds, back it came to him. When he threw a 
handful away, back came two in its place. And 
at every new coup the crowd applauded the 
incomparable daring, the unparalleled presci- 
ence of the Wizard. 

Like the touch of Midas, his hand turned 
everything to gold. 

"Mother," he repeated, "it's no use. It's 
like this here Destiny, as the books call it." 

The great fortune that Tomlinson, the Wiz- 
ard of Finance, was trying his best to lose had 
come to him with wonderful suddenness. As 
yet it was hardly six months old. As to how 
it had originated, there were all sorts of stories 
afloat in the weekly illustrated press. They 
agreed mostly on the general basis that Tom- 
linson had made his vast fortune by his own 
indomitable pluck and dogged industry. Some 
62 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

said that he had been at one time a mere farm 
hand who, by sheer doggedness, had fought his 
way from the hay-mow to the control of the 
produce market of seventeen states. Others 
had it that he had been a lumber-jaclc who, by 
sheer doggedness, had got possession of the 
whole lumber forest of the Lake district. Oth- 
ers said that he had been a miner in a Lake 
Superior copper mine who had, by the dogged- 
ness of his character, got a practical monopoly 
of the copper supply. These Saturday articles, 
at any rate, made the Saturday reader rigid 
with sympathetic doggedness himself, which 
was all that the editor (who was doggedly try- 
ing to make the paper pay) wanted to effect. 

But in reality the making of Tomlinson's for- 
tune was very simple. The recipe for it is open 
to anyone. It is only necessary to own a hillside 
farm beside Lake Erie where the uncleared 
bush and the broken fields go straggling down 
to the lake, and to have running through it a 
creek, such as that called Tomlinson's, brawling 
among the stones and willows, and to discover 
In the bed of a creek — a gold mine. 

That is all. 

Nor is It necessary in these well-ordered days 
to discover the gold for one's self. One might 
have lived a lifetime on the farm, as Tomlin- 
son's father had, and never discover it for one's 
self. For that Indeed the best medium of des- 
63 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

tiny is a geologist, let us say the senior professor 
of geology at Plutoria University. 

That was how it happened. 

The senior professor, so it chanced, was 
spending his vacation near by on the shores of 
the lake, and his time was mostly passed — for 
how better can a man spend a month of pleas- 
ure? — in looking for outcroppings of Devonian 
rock of the post-tertiary period. For which 
purpose he carried a vacation hammer in his 
pocket, and made from time to time a note or 
two as he went along, or filled his pockets with 
the chippings of vacation rocks. 

So it chanced that he came to Tomlinson's 
Creek at the very point where a great slab of 
Devonian rock bursts through the clay of the 
bank. When the senior professor of geology 
saw it and noticed a stripe like a mark on a 
tiger's back — a fault he called it — that ran over 
the face of the block, he was at it in an instant, 
beating off fragments with his little hammer. 

Tomlinson and his boy Fred were logging in 
the underbrush near by with a long chain and 
yoke of oxen, but the geologist was so excited 
that he did not see them till the sound of his 
eager hammer had brought them to his side. 
They took him up to the frame house in the 
clearing, where the chatelaine was hoeing a 
potato patch with a man's hat on her head, and 
64 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

they gave him buttermilk and soda cakes, but 
his hand shook so that he could hardly eat them. 
The geologist left Cahoga station that night 
for the City with a newspaper full of specimens 
inside his suit-case, and he knew that if any 
person or persons would put up money enough 
to tear that block of rock away and follow the 
fissure down, there would be found there some- 
thing to astonish humanity, geologists and all. 

After that point in the launching of a gold 
mine the rest is easy. Generous, warm-hearted 
men, interested in geology, were soon found. 
There was no stint of money. The great rock 
was torn sideways from its place, and from be- 
neath it the crumbled, glittering rock-dust that 
sparkled in the sun was sent in little boxes to 
the testing laboratories of Plutoria University. 
There the senior professor of geology had sat 
up with it far into the night in a darkened 
laboratory, with little blue flames playing under- 
neath crucibles, as in a magician's cavern, and 
with the door locked. And as each sample that 
he tested was set aside and tied in a cardboard 
box by itself, he labelled it "aur. p. 75," and 
the pen shook in his hand as he marked it. For 
to professors of geology those symbols mean 
"this is seventy-five per cent pure gold." So 
it was no wonder that the senior professor of 
geology working far into the night among the 
65 



Arcadian Adventures with, the Idle Rich 

blue flames shook with excitement; not, of 
course, for the gold's sake as money (he had 
no time to think of that), but because if this 
thing was true it meant that an auriferous vein 
had been found in what was Devonian rock 
of the post-tertiary stratification, and if that 
was so it upset enough geology to spoil a text- 
book. It would mean that the professor could 
read a paper at the next Pan-Geological Con- 
ference that would turn the whole assembly into 
a bedlam. 

It pleased him, too, to know that the men he 
was dealing with were generous. They had 
asked him to name his own price for the tests 
that he made, and when he had said two dollars 
per sample they had told him to go right ahead. 
The professor was not, I suppose, a mercenary 
man, but it pleased him to think that he could 
clean up sixteen dollars in a single evening in 
his laboratory. It showed, at any rate, that 
business men put science at its proper value. 
Strangest of all was the fact that the men had 
told him that even this ore was apparently noth- 
ing to what there was; it had all come out of 
one single spot in the creek, not the hundredth 
part of the whole claim. Lower down, where 
they had thrown the big dam across to make 
the bed dry, they were taking out this same stuff 
and even better, so they said, in cartloads. 
The hydrauhc dredges were tearing it from the 
66 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

bed of the creek all day, and at night a great 
circuit of arc lights gleamed and sputtered over 
the roaring labour of the friends of geological 
research. 

Thus had the Erie Auriferous Consolidated 
broken In a tidal wave over financial circles. 
On the Stock Exchange, In the down-town of- 
fices, and among the palm-trees of the Mauso- 
leum Club they talked of nothing else. And 
so great was the power of the wave that It 
washed Tomllnson and his wife along on the 
crest of It, and landed them fifty feet up In their 
thousand-dollar suite In the Grand Palaver. 
And as a result of It "mother" wore a beetle- 
back jacket, and Tomllnson received a hundred 
telegrams a day, and Fred quit school and ate 
chocolates. 

But In the business world the most amazing 
thing about It was the wonderful shrewdness of 
Tomllnson. 

The first sign of it had been that he had ut- 
terly refused to allow the Erie Auriferous Con- 
solidated (as the friends of geology called 
themselves) to take over the top half of the 
Tomllnson farm. For the bottom part he let 
them give him one-half of the preferred stock 
In the company In return for their supply of 
development capital. This was their own prop- 
osition ; In fact, they reckoned that In doing this 
they were trading about two hundred thousand 
67 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

dollars' worth of machinery for, say ten million 
dollars of gold. But it frightened them when 
Tomlinson said "Yes" to the offer, and when 
he said that as to common stock they might 
keep it, it was no use to him, they were alarmed 
and uneasy till they made him take a block of 
it for the sake of market confidence. 

But the top end of the farm he refused to 
surrender, and the friends of applied geology 
knew that there must be something pretty large 
behind this refusal; the more so as the reason 
that Tomlinson gave was such a simple one. 
He said that he didn't want to part with the top 
end of the place because his father was buried 
on it beside the creek, and so he didn't want 
the dam higher up, not for any consideration. 

This was regarded in business circles as a 
piece of great shrewdness. "Says his father is 
buried there, eh? Devilish shrewd that!" 

It was so long since any of the members of 
the Exchange or the Mausoleum Club had wan- 
dered into such places as Cahoga County that 
they did not know that there was nothing 
strange in what Tomlinson said. His father 
was buried there, on the farm itself, in a grave 
overgrown with raspberry bushes, and with a 
wooden headstone encompassed by a square of 
cedar rails, and slept as many another pioneer 
of Cahoga is sleeping. 

"Devilish smart idea!" they said; and forth- 
68 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

with half the financial men of the city buried 
their fathers, or professed to have done so, in 
likely places — along the prospective right-of- 
way of a suburban railway, for example; in 
fact, in any place that marked them out for the 
joyous resurrection of an expropriation pur- 
chase. 

Thus the astounding shrewdness of Tomlin- 
son rapidly became a legend, the more so as he 
turned everything he touched to gold. 

They narrated little stories of him in the 
whiskey-and-soda corners of the Mausoleum 
Club. 

"I put it to him in a casual way," related, for 
example, Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, "casually, but 
quite frankly. I said, 'See here, this is just a 
bagatelle to you, no doubt, but to me it might 
be of some use. T. C. bonds,' I said, 'have 
risen twenty-two and a half in a week. You 
know as well as I do that they are only col- 
lateral trust, and that the stock underneath 
never could and never can earn a par dividend. 
Now,' I said, 'Mr. Tomllnson, tell me what all 
that means?' Would you believe it, the fellow 
looked me right In the face in that queer way he 
has and he said, 'I don't know!' " 

"He said he didn't know!" repeated the lis- 
tener, in a tone of amazement and respect. 
"By Jove! eh? he said he didn't know! The 
man's a wizard!" 

69 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"And he looked as If he didn't!" went on 
Mr. Fyshe. "That's the deuce of it. That 
man when he wants to can put on a look, sir, 
that simply means nothing, absolutely nothing." 

In this way Tomllnson had earned his name 
of the Wizard of American Finance. 

And meantime Tomllnson and his wife, 
within their suite at the Grand Palaver, had 
long since reached their decision. For there 
was one aspect and only one in which Tomlln- 
son was really and truly a wizard. He saw 
clearly that for himself and his wife the vast 
fortune that had fallen to them was of no man- 
ner of use. What did It bring them? The 
noise and roar of the City In place of the silence 
of the farm and the racket of the great rotunda 
to drown the remembered murmur of the waters 
of the creek. 

So Tomllnson had decided to rid himself of 
his new wealth, save only such as might be 
needed to make his son a different kind of man 
from himself. 

"For Fred, of course," he said, "it's different. 
But out of such a lot as that It'll be easy to keep 
enough for him. It'll be a grand thing for 
Fred, this money. He won't have to grow up 
like you and me. He'll have opportunities we 
never got." 

He was getting them already. The oppor- 
tunity to wear seven-dollar patent leather shoes 
70 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

and a bell-shaped overcoat with a silk collar, 
to lounge into moving picture shows and eat 
chocolates and smoke cigarettes — all these op- 
portunities he was gathering immediately. 
Presently, when he learned his way round a 
little, he would get still bigger ones. 

"He's improving fast," said mother. She 
was thinking of his patent leather shoes. 

"He's popular," said his father. "I 
notice it downstairs. He sasses any of them 
just as he likes; and no matter how busy they 
are, as soon as they see it's Fred they're all 
ready to have a laugh with him." 

Certainly they were, as any hotel clerk with 
plastered hair is ready to laugh with the son of 
a multimillionaire. It's a certain sense of hu- 
mour that they develop. 

"But for us, mother," said the Wizard, 
"we'll be rid of it. The gold is there. It's not 
right to keep it back. But we'll just find a way 
to pass it on to folks that need it worse than 
we do." 

For a time they had thought of giving away 
the fortune. But how? Who did they know 
that would take it? 

It had crossed their minds — for who could 
live in the City a month without observing the 
imposing buildings of Plutoria University, as 
fine as any departmental store in town? — that 
they might give it to the college. 
71 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 



But there, it seemed, the way was blocked. 

"You see, mother," said the puzzled Wizard, 
"we're not known. We're strangers. I'd look 
fine going up there to the college and saying, 'I 
want to give you people a million dollars.' 
They'd laugh at me !" 

"But don't one read it in the papers," his 
wife had protested, "where Mr. Carnegie gives 
ever so much to the colleges, more than all 
we've got, and they take it?" 

"That's different," said the Wizard. "He's 
in with them. They all know him. Why, he's 
•a sort of chairman of different boards of col- 
leges, and he knows all the heads of the schools, 
and the professors, so it's no wonder that if he 
offers to give a pension, or anything, they take 
it. Just think of me going up to one of the 
professors up there in the middle of his teach- 
ing and saying, 'I'd like to give you a pension 
for life!' Imagine it! Think what he'd say!" 

But the Tomlinsons couldn't imagine it, 
which was just as well. 

So it came about that they had embarked on 
their system. Mother, who knew most arith- 
metic, was the leading spirit. She tracked out 
all the stocks and bonds in the front page of the 
Financial Undertone, and on her recommenda- 
tion the Wizard bought. They knew the stocks 
only by their letters, but this itself gave a touch 
of high finance to their deliberations. 
72 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"I'd buy some of this R. O. P. if I was you," 
said mother; "it's gone down from 127 to 107 
in two days, and I reckon it'll be all gone in ten 
days or so." 

"Wouldn't 'G. G. deb.' be better? It goes 
down quicker." 

"Well, it's a quick one," she assented, "but 
it don't go down so steady. You can't rely on 
it. You take ones like R. O. P. and T. R. R. 
pfd. ; they go down all the time and you know 
where you are." 

As a result of which Tomlinson would send 
his instructions. He did it all from the ro- 
tunda in a way of his own that he had evolved 
with a telegraph clerk who told him the names 
of brokers, and he dealt thus through brokers 
whom he never saw. As a result of this, the 
sluggish R. O. P. and T. R. R. would take as 
sudden a leap into the air as might a mule with 
a galvanic shock applied to its tail. At once 
the word was whispered that the "Tomlinson 
interests" were after the R. O. P. to reorganise 
it, and the whole floor of the Exchange scram- 
bled for the stock. 

And so it was that after a month or two of 
these operations the Wizard of Finance saw 
himself beaten. 

"It's no good, mother," he repeated, "it's 
just a kind of Destiny." 

Destiny perhaps it was. 
73 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

But, if the Wizard of Finance had known it, 
at this very moment when he sat with the Alad- 
din's palace of his golden fortune reared so 
strangely about him, Destiny was preparing for 
him still stranger things. 

Destiny, so it would seem, was devising its 
own ways and m.eans of dealing with Tomlin- 
son's fortune. As one of the ways and means, 
Destiny was sending at this moment as its spe- 
cial emissaries two huge, portly figures, wearing 
gigantic goloshes, and striding downwards from 
the halls of Plutoria University to the Grand 
Palaver Hotel. And one of these was the gi- 
gantic Dr. Boomer, the president of the col- 
lege, and the other was his professor of Greek, 
almost as gigantic as himself. And they carried 
in their capacious pockets bundles of pamphlets 
on "Archaeological Remains of Mitylene," and 
the "Use of the Greek Pluperfect," and little 
treatises such as "Education and Philanthropy," 
by Dr. Boomer, and "The Excavation of Mity- 
lene: An Estimate of Cost," by Dr. Boyster, 
"Boomer on the Foundation and Maintenance 
of Chairs," etc. 

Many a man in city finance who had seen Dr. 
Boomer enter his office with a bundle of these 
monographs and a fighting glitter in his eyes 
had sunk back in his chair in dismay. For it 
meant that Dr. Boomer had tracked him out for 
74 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

a benefaction to the University, and that all 
resistance was hopeless. 

When Dr. Boomer once laid upon a capital- 
ist's desk his famous pamphlet on the "Use of 
the Greek Pluperfect," it was as if an Arabian 
sultan had sent the fatal bow-string to a con- 
demned pasha, or Morgan the buccaneer had 
served the death-sign on a shuddering pirate. 

So they came nearer and nearer, shouldering 
the passers-by. The sound of them as they 
talked v/as like the roaring of the sea as Homer 
heard it. Never did Castor and Pollux come 
surging into battle as Dr. Boomer and Dr. 
Boyster bore down upon the Grand Palaver 
Hotel. 

Tomlinson, the Wizard of Finance, had hesi- 
tated about going to the university. The uni- 
versity was coming to him. As for those 
millions of his, he could take his choice — dormi- 
tories, apparatus, campuses, buildings, endow- 
ment, anything he liked — but choose he must. 
And if he feared that after all his fortune was 
too vast even for such a disposal. Dr. Boomer 
would show him how he might use it in digging 
up ancient Mitylene, or modern Smyrna, or the 
lost cities of the Plain of Pactolus. If the size 
of the fortune troubled him Dr. Boomer would 
dig him up the whole African Sahara from 
Alexandria to Morocco, and ask for more. 

But if Destiny held all this for TomHnson in 
75 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

its outstretched palm before It, it concealed 
stranger things still beneath the folds of its 
toga. 

There were enough surprises there to turn 
the faces of the whole directorate of the Erie 
Auriferous Consolidated as yellow as the gold 
that they mined. 

For at this very moment, while the president 
of Plutoria University drew nearer and nearer 
to the Grand Palaver Hotel, the senior profes- 
sor of geology was working again beside the 
blue flames in his darkened laboratory. And 
this time there was no shaking excitement over 
him. Nor were the labels that he marked, as 
sample followed sample in the tests, the same 
as those of the previous marking. Not by any 
means. 

And his grave face as he worked in silence 
was as still as the stones of the post-tertiary 
period. 



Chapter III. — The Arrested Philanthropy 
of Mr. Tomlinson 

THIS, Mr. Tomlinson, is our campus," 
said President Boomer as they 
passed through the iron gates of 
Plutoria University. 

"For camping?" said the Wizard. 

"Not exactly," answered the president, 
"though it would, of course, suit for that. 
Nihil humaniim alienum, eh?" and he broke 
into a loud, explosive laugh, while his spectacles 
irradiated that peculiar form of glee derived 
from a Latin quotation by those able to enjoy 
it. Dr. Boyster, walking on the other side of 
Mr. Tomlinson, joined in the laugh in a deep, 
reverberating chorus. 

The two had the Wizard of Finance be- 
tween them, and they were marching him up to 
the University. He was taken along much as 
is an arrested man who has promised to go 
quietly. They kept their hands off him, but 
they watched him sideways through their spec- 
tacles. At the least sign of restlessness they 
doused him with Latin. The Wizard of Fi- 
nance, having been marked out by Dr. Boomer 
and Dr. Boyster as a prospective benefactor, 

77 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

was having Latin poured over him to reduce 
him to the proper degree of plasticity. 

They had already put him through the first 
stage. They had, three days ago, called on 
him at the Grand Palaver and served him with 
a pamphlet on "The Excavation of Mitylene" 
as a sort of writ. Tomlinson and his wife had 
looked at the pictures of the ruins, and from the 
appearance of them they judged that Mitylene 
was in Mexico, and they said that it was a 
shame to see it in that state and that the United 
States ought to intervene. 

As the second stage on the path of philan- 
thropy, the Wizard of Finance was now being 
taken to look at the university. Dr. Boomer 
knew by experience that no rich man could look 
at it without wanting to give it money. 

And here the president had found that there 
is no better method of dealing with business 
men than to use Latin on them. For other pur- 
poses the president used other things. For 
example at a friendly dinner at the Mausoleum 
Club where light conversation was in order, 
Dr. Boomer chatted, as has been seen, on the 
archaeological remains of the Navajos. In the 
same way, at Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's Dante 
luncheons, he generally talked of the Italian 
cinquecentisti and whether Gian Gobbo della 
Scala had left a greater name than Can Grande 
della Spiggiola. But such talk as that was nat- 
78 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

urally only for women. Business men are much 
too shrewd for that kind of thing; in fact, so 
shrewd are they, as President Boomer had long 
since discovered, that nothing pleases them so 
much as the quiet, firm assumption that they 
know Latin. It is like writing them up an asset. 
So it was that Dr. Boomer would greet a busi- 
ness acquaintance with a roaring salutation of, 
"Terque quaterque heatus\ or stand wringing 
his hand off to the tune of ^'Oh et presidium et 
dulce deciis meiim." 

This caught them every time. 

"You don't," said Tomlinson the Wizard in 
a hesitating tone as he looked at the smooth 
grass of the campus, "I suppose, raise anything 
on it?" 

"No, no; this Is only for field sports," said 
the president; "sunt quos curricula " 

To which Dr. Boyster on the other side 
added, like a chorus, " pulverem Olympicum." 

This was their favourite quotation. It al- 
ways gave President Boomer a chance to speak 
of the final letter " m " in Latin poetry, and 
to say that in his opinion the so-called elision of 
the final " m " was more properly a dropping 
of the vowel with a repercussion of the two 
last consonants. He supported this by quoting 
Ammianus, at which Dr. Boyster exclaimed, 
"Pooh! Ammianus: more dog Latin 1 " and 
appealed to Mr. Tomlinson as to whether any 
79 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

rational man nowadays cared what Ammlanus 
thought? 

To all of which Tomlinson answered never 
a word, but looked steadily first at one and 
then at the other. Dr. Boomer said afterwards 
that the penetration of Tomlinson was won- 
derful, and that it was excellent to see how 
Boyster tried in vain to draw him; and Boy- 
ster said afterwards that the way in which 
Tomlinson quietly refused to be led on by 
Boomer was delicious, and that it was a pity 
that Aristophanes was not there to do it justice. 

All of which was happening as they went in 
at the iron gates and up the elm avenue of 
Plutoria University. 

The university, as everyone knows, stands 
with its great gates on Plutoria Avenue^^ahd 
with its largest buildings, those of the facul- 
ties of industrial and mechanical science, front- 
ing full upon the street. 

These buildings are exceptionally fine, stand- 
ing fifteen stories high and comparing favour- 
ably with the best departmental stores or fac- 
tories in the City. Indeed, after nightfall, 
when they are all lighted up for the evening 
technical classes and when their testing ma- 
chinery is in full swing and there are students 
going in and out in overall suits, people have 
often mistaken the university, or this newer 
part of it, for a factory. A foreign visitor 
80 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

once said that the students looked like plumb- 
ers, and President Boomer was so proud of 
it that he put the phrase into his next Com- 
mencement address; and from there the news- 
papers got it and the Associated Press took it 
up and sent it all over the United States with 
the heading, " Have Appearance of Plumbers-; 
Plutoria University Congratulated on Char- 
acter of Students," and it was a proud day 
indeed for the heads of the Industrial Science 
faculty. 

But the older part of the university stands 
so quietly and modestly at the top end of the 
elm avenue, so hidden by the leaves of it, that 
no one could mistake it for a factory. This 
indeed was once the whole university, and had 
stood there since colonial days under the name 
Concordia College. It had been filled with 
generations of presidents and professors of the 
older type with long white beards and rusty 
black clothes, and salaries of fifteen hundred 
dollars. 

But the change both of name and of char- 
acter from Concordia College to Plutoria Uni- 
versity was the work of President Boomer. 
He had changed it from an old-fashioned col- 
lege of the by-gone type to a university in the 
true modern sense. At Plutoria they now 
taught everything. Concordia College, for 
example, had no teaching of religion except 
8i 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

lectures on the Bible. Now they had lectures 
also on Confucianism, Mohammedanism, Bud- 
dhism, with an optional course on atheism for 
students in the final year. 

And, of course, they had long since admitted 
women, and there were now beautiful creatures 
with Cleo de Merode hair studying astronomy 
at oaken desks and looking up at the teacher 
with eyes like comets. The university taught 
everything and did everything. It had whirl- 
ing machines on the top of it that measured 
the speed of the wind, and deep in its base- 
ments it measured earthquakes with a seismo- 
graph; it held classes on forestry and dentistry 
and palmistry; it sent life classes into the slums, 
and death classes to the cit)^ morgue. It offered 
such a vast variety of themes, topics, and sub- 
jects to the students, that there was nothing 
that a student was compelled to learn, while 
from its own presses in Its own press-building 
It sent out a shower of bulletins and mono- 
graphs like driven snow from a rotary plough. 

In fact, It had become, as President Boomer 
told all the business men In town, not merely 
a university, but a universitas in the true sense, 
and every one of its faculties was now a facultas 
In the real acceptance of the word, and Its 
studies properly and truly stiidia; indeed, if the 
business men would only build a few more 
dormitories and put up enough money to form 
82 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

an adequate fondatum or fundum then the good 
work might be looked upon as complete. 

As the three walked up the elm avenue there 
met them a httle stream of students with college 
books, and female students with winged-victory 
hats, and professors with last year's overcoats. 
And some went past with a smile and others 
with a shiver. 

"That's Professor Withers," said the presi- 
dent in a sympathetic voice as one of the shiv- 
ering figures went past; "poor Withers," and 
he sighed. 

"What's wrong with him?" said the Wiz- 
ard; "is he sick?" 

"No, not sick," said the president quietly 
and sadly, "merely inefficient." 

"Inefficient?" 

"Unfortunately so. Mind you, I don't mean 
'inefficient' in every sense. By no means. If 
anyone were to come to me and say, 'Boomer, 
can you put your hand for me on a first-class 
botanist?' I'd say, 'Take Withers.' I'd say 
it in a minute." 

This was true. He would have. In fact, 
if anyone had made this kind of rash speech, 
Dr. Boomer would have given away half the 
professoriate. 

"Well, what's wrong with him?" repeated 
Tomlinson. "I suppose he ain't quite up to 
the mark in some ways, eh?" 
83 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"Precisely," said the president, "not quite 
up to the mark — a very happy way of putting 
it. Capax imperii nisi imperasset, as no doubt 
you are thinking to yourself. The fact is that 
Withers, though an excellent fellow, can't man- 
age large classes. With small classes he is all 
right, but with large classes the man is lost. 
He can't handle them." 

"He can't, eh?" said the Wizard. 

"No. But what can I do? There he is. 
I can't dismiss him, I can't pension him. I've 
no money for it." 

Here the president slackened a little in his 
walk and looked sideways at the prospective 
benefactor. But Tomlinson gave no sign. 

A second professorial figure passed them on 
the other side. 

"There again," said the president, "that's 
another case of inefficiency — Professor Shottat, 
our senior professor of English." 

"What's wrong with him?'' asked the 
Wizard. 

"He can't handle small classes," said the 
president. "With large classes he is really 
excellent, but with small ones the man is simply 
hopeless." 

In this fashion, before Mr. Tomlinson had 

measured the length of the avenue, he had had 

ample opportunity to judge of the crying need 

of money at Plutoria University, and of the 

84 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

perplexity of its president. He was shown 
professors who could handle the first year, but 
were powerless with the second; others who 
were all right with the second but broke down 
with the third, while others could handle the 
third but collapsed with the fourth. There 
were professors who were all right in their own 
subject, but perfectly impossible outside of it; 
others who were so occupied outside of their 
own subject that they were useless inside of 
it; others who knew their subject, but couldn't 
lecture; and others again who lectured admir- 
ably, but didn't know their subject. 

In short it was clear — as it was meant to 
be — that the need of the moment was a sum 
of money sufficient to enable the president to 
dismiss everybody but himself and Dr. Boy- 
ster. The latter stood in a class all by him- 
self. He had known the president for forty- 
five years, ever since he was a fat little boy 
with spectacles in a classical academy, stuffing 
himself on irregular Greek verbs as readily 
as if on oysters. 

But it soon appeared that the need for dis- 
missing the professors was only part of the 
trouble. There were the buildings to consider. 

"This, I am ashamed to say," said Dr. 
Boomer, as they passed the Imitation Greek 
portico of the old Concordia College building, 
85 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Eich 

"is our original home, the fons et origo of our 
studies, our faculty of arts." 

It was indeed a dilapidated building, yet 
there was a certain majesty about it, too, espe- 
cially when one reflected that it had been stand- 
ing there looking much the same at the time 
when its students had trooped off in a flock to 
join the army of the Potomac, and much the 
same indeed three generations before that, 
when the classes were closed and the students 
clapped three-cornered hats on their heads and 
were off to enlist as minute men with flintlock 
muskets under General Washington. 

But Dr. Boomer's one idea was to knock the 
building down and to build on its site a real 
facultas ten stories high, with elevators in it. 

Tomlinson looked about him humbly as he 
stood in the main hall. The atmosphere of the 
place awed him. There were bulletins and 
time-tables and notices stuck on the walls that 
gave evidence of the activity of the place. 
"Professor Slithers will be unable to meet his 
classes to-day," ran one of them, and another, 
"Professor Withers will not meet his classes 
this week," and another, "Owing to illness, 
Professor Shottat will not lecture this month," 
while still another announced, " Owing to the 
indisposition of Professor Podge, all botanical 
classes are suspended, but Professor Podge 
hopes to be able to join in the Botanical Picnic 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Excursion to Loon Lake on Saturday after- 
noon." You could judge of the grinding rou- 
tine of the work from the nature of these 
notices. Anyone familiar with the work of 
colleges would not heed it, but it shocked Tom- 
linson to think how often the professors of the 
college were stricken down by overwork. 

Here and there in the hall, set into niches, 
were bronze busts of men with Roman faces 
and bare necks, and .the edge of a toga cast 
over each shoulder. 

"Who would these be?" asked Tomlinson, 
pointing at them. 

"Some of the chief founders and benefactors 
of the faculty," answered the president, and 
at this the hopes of Tomlinson sank In his 
heart. For he realised the class of man one 
had to belong to in order to be accepted as a 
university benefactor. 

"A splendid group of men, are they not?" 
said the president. "We owe them much. This 
Is the late Mr. Hogworth, a man of singularly 
large heart." Here he pointed to a bronze 
figure wearing a wreath of laurel and inscribed 
"Gullelmus Hogworth, Litt. Doc." "He had 
made a great fortune In the produce business, 
and wishing to mark his gratitude to the com- 
munity, he erected the anemometer, the wind- 
measure, on the roof of the building, attaching 
to It no other condition than that his name 
87 



Arcadian Adventures tvith the Idle Rich 

should be printed In the weekly reports imme- 
diately beside the velocity of the wind. The 
figure beside him Is the late Mr. Underbugg, 
who founded our lectures on the Four Gospels 
on the sole stipulation that henceforth any refer- 
ence of ours to the four gospels should be 
coupled with his name." 

"What's that after his name?" asked Tom- 
Hnson. 

"Litt. Doc?" said the president. "Doctor 
of Letters, our honorary degree. We are al- 
ways happy to grant it to our benefactors by 
a vote of the faculty." 

Here Dr. Boomer and Dr. Boyster wheeled 
half round and looked quietly and steadily at 
the Wizard of Finance. To both their minds 
it was perfectly plain that an honourable bar- 
gain was being struck. 

"Yes, Mr, Tomllnson," said the president, 
as they emerged from the building, "no doubt 
you begin to realise our unhappy position. 
Money, money, money," he repeated half 
musingly. "If I had the money I'd have that 
whole building down and dismantled in a fort- 
night." 

From the central building the three passed 
to the museum building, where Tomllnson was 
shown a vast skeleton cf a DIplodocus Maxl- 
mus, and was specially warned not to confuse 
it with the Dinosaurus Perfectus, whose bones, 
88 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

however, could be bought If anyone, any man 
of large heart, would come to the university 
and say straight out, "Gentlemen, what can I 
do for you?" Better still. It appeared the 
whole museum, which was hopelessly anti- 
quated, being twenty-five years old, could be 
entirely knocked down If a sufficient sum was 
forthcoming; and its curator, who was as 
ancient as the DInosaurus itself, could be dis- 
missed on half-pay If any man had a heart large 
enough for the dismissal. 

From the museum they passed to the library, 
v/here there were full-length portraits of more 
founders and benefactors in long red robes, 
holding scrolls of paper, and others sitting hold- 
ing pens and writing on parchment, with a 
Greek temple and a thunderstorm in the back- 
ground. 

And here again It appeared that the crying 
need of the moment was for someone to come 
to the university and say, "Gentlemen, what 
can I do for you?" On which the whole li- 
brary, for It was twenty years old and out of 
date, might be blown up with dynamite and 
carted away. 

But at all this the hopes of Tomllnson sank 
lower and lower. The red robes and the scrolls 
were too much for him. 

From the library they passed to the tall build- 
ings that housed the faculty of Industrial and 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

mechanical science. And here again the same 
pitiful lack of money was everywhere appar- 
ent. For example, in the physical science de- 
partment there was a mass of apparatus for 
which the university was unable to afford suit- 
able premises, and in the chemical department 
there were vast premises for which the uni- 
versity was unable to buy apparatus, and so on. 
Indeed, it was part of Dr. Boomer's method to 
get himself endowed first with premises too big 
for the apparatus, and then by appealing to 
public spirit to call for enough apparatus to 
more than fill the premises, by means of which 
system industrial science at Plutoria University 
advanced with increasing and gigantic strides. 

But most of all the electric department inter- 
ested the Wizard of Finance. And this time 
his voice lost its hesitating tone and he looked 
straight at Dr. Boomer as he began, 

"I have a boy " 

"Ah!" said Dr. Boomer, with a huge ejacu- 
lation of surprise and relief; "you have a boy!" 

There were volumes in his tone. What it 
meant was, " Now, indeed, we have got you 
where we want you," and he exchanged a mean- 
ing look with the professor of Greek. 

Within five minutes the president and Tom- 
linson and Dr. Boyster were gravely discuss- 
ing on what terms and in what way Fred might 
be admitted to study in the faculty of indus- 
90 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

trial science. The president, on learning that 
Fred had put in four years in Cahoga County 
Section No. 3 School, and had been head of 
his class in ciphering, nodded his head gravely 
and said it would simply be a matter of a 
pro tanto; that, in fact, he felt sure that Fred 
might be admitted ad eundem. But the real 
condition on which they meant to admit him 
was, of course, not mentioned. 

One door only In the faculty of industrial 
and mechanical science they did not pass, a 
heavy oak door at the end of a corridor bear- 
ing the painted inscription, "Geological and 
Metallurgical Laboratories." Stuck in the 
door was a card with the words (they were con- 
ceived in the courteous phrases of mechanical 
science, which is almost a branch of business 
in the real sense), "Busy — keep out." 

Dr. Boomer looked at the card. "Ah, yes," 
he said, "Gildas Is no doubt busy with his tests. 
We won't disturb him." The president was 
always proud to find a professor busy; it looked 
well. 

But if Dr. Boomer had known what was 
going on behind the oaken door of the Depart- 
ment of Geology and Metallurgy, he would 
have felt considerably disturbed himself. 

For here again Gildas, senior professor of 
geology, was working among his blue flames at 
a final test on which depended the fate of the 
91 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Erie Auriferous Consolidated and all connected 
with it. 

Before him there were some twenty or thirty 
packets of crumpled dust and splintered ore 
that glittered on the testing table. It had been 
taken up from the creek along Its whole length, 
at even spaces twenty yards apart, by an expert 
sent down in haste by the directorate, after 
Gildas's second report, and heavily bribed to 
keep his mouth shut. 

And as Professor Gildas stood and worked 
at the samples and tied them up after analysis 
in little white cardboard boxes, he marked each 
one very carefully and neatly with the words, 
"Pyrites: worthless." 

Beside the professor worked a young demon- 
strator of last year's graduation class. It was 
he, in fact, who had written the polite notice 
on the card. 

"What is the stuff, anyway?" he asked. 

"A sulphuret of iron," said the professor, 
"or iron pyrites. In colour and appearance 
it is practically identical with gold. Indeed, 
in all ages," he went on, dropping at once into 
the class-room tone and adopting the profes- 
sorial habit of jumping backwards twenty cen- 
turies in order to explain anything properly, 
"it has been readily mistaken for the precious 
metal. The ancients called it 'fool's gold.' 
Martin Frobisher brought back four shiploads 
92 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

of it from Baffin Land thinking that he had 
discovered an Eldorado. There are large de- 
posits of it in the mines of Cornwall, and it 
is just possible," here the professor measured 
his words as if speaking of something that he 
wouldn't promise, "that the Cassiterides of the 
Phoenicians contained deposits of the same sul- 
phuret. Indeed, I defy anyone," he continued, 
for he was piqued in his scientific pride, "to 
distinguish it from gold without a laboratory 
test. In large quantities, I concede, its lack of 
weight would betray it to a trained hand, but 
without testing its solubility in nitric acid, or the 
fact of its burning with a blue flame under the 
blow-pipe, it cannot be detected. In short, when 
crystallised in dodecahedrons " 

"Is it any good?" broke in the demonstrator. 

"Good?" said the professor. "Oh, you 
mean commercially? Not in the slightest. 
Much less valuable than, let us say, ordinary 
mud or clay. In fact, it is absolutely good 
for nothing." 

They were silent for a moment, watching the 
blue flames above the brazier. 

Then Gildas spoke again. "Oddly enough," 
he said, "the first set of samples were undoubt- 
edly pure gold — not the faintest doubt of that. 
That is the really interesting part of the mat- 
ter. These gentlemen concerned in the enter- 
prise will, of course, lose their money, and I 
93 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

shall therefore decline to accept the very hand- 
some fee which they had offered me for my 
services. But the main feature, the real point 
of interest in this matter remains. Here we 
have undoubtedly a sporadic deposit, — what 
miners call a pocket, — of pure gold in a De- 
vonian formation of the post-tertiary period. 
This once established, we must revise our en- 
tire theory of the distribution of igneous and 
aqueous rocks. In fact, I am already getting 
notes together for a paper for the Pan-Geo- 
logical under the heading, 'Auriferous Excre- 
tions in the Devonian Strata: a Working Hy- 
pothesis.' I hope to read it at the next 
meeting." 

The young demonstrator looked at the pro- 
fessor with one eye half closed. 

"I don't think I would if I were you," he 
said. 

Now this young demonstrator knew nothing, 
or practically nothing, of geology, because he 
came of one of the richest and best families 
In town and didn't need to. But he was a smart 
young man, dressed in the latest fashion, with 
brown boots and a crosswise tie, and he knew 
more about money and business and the stock 
exchange in five minutes than Professor Gildas 
In his whole existence. 

"Why not?" said the professor. 

"Why, don't you see what's happened?" 
94 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"Eh?" saldGildas. 

"What happened to those first samples? 
When that bunch got interested and planned to 
float the company? Don't you see? Somebody 
salted them on you." 

"Salted them on me?" repeated the pro- 
fessor, mystified. 

"Yes, salted them. Somebody got wise to 
what they were and swopped them on you for 
the real thing, so as to get your certified re- 
port that the stuff was gold." 

"I begin to see," muttered the professor. 
"Somebody exchanged the samples, some per- 
son no doubt desirous of establishing the theory 
that a sporadic outcropping of the sort might 
be found in a post-tertiary formation. I see, 
I see. No doubt he intended to prepare a 
paper on it, and prove his thesis by these tests. 
I see it all!" 

The demonstrator looked at the professor 
with a sort of pity. 

"You're on!" he said, and he laughed softly 
to himself. 

"Well," said Dr. Boomer, after Tomlinson 
had left the university, "what do you make 
of him?" The president had taken Dr. Boy- 
ster over to his house beside the campus, and 
there in his study had given him a cigar as big 
as a rope and taken another himself. This 
95 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

was a sign that Dr. Boomer wanted Dr. Boy- 
ster's opinion in plain English, without any 
Latin about it. 

"Remarkable man," said the professor of 
Greek; "wonderful penetration, and a man of 
very few words. Of course his game is clear 
enough?" 

"Entirely so," asserted Dr. Boomer. 

"It's clear enough that he means to give the 
money on two conditions." 

"Exactly," said the president. 

"First that w '. admit his son, who is quite 
unqualified, to tne senior studies in electrical 
science, and second that we grant him the de- 
gree of Doctor of Letters. Those are his 
terms." 

"Can we meet them?" 

"Oh, certainly. As to the son, there is no 
difficulty, of course; as to the degree, it's only 
a question of getting the faculty to vote it. 
I think we can manage it." 

Vote it they did that very afternoon. True, 
if the members of the faculty had known the 
things that were being whispered, and more 
than whispered, In the City about Tomlinson 
and his fortune, no degree would ever have 
been conferred on him. But it so happened 
that at that moment the whole professoriate 
was absorbed in one of those great educational 
crises which from time to time shake a unlver- 
96 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

sity to its base. The meeting of the faculty 
that day bid fair to lose all vestige of decorum 
in the excitement of the moment. For, as Dean 
Elderberry Foible, the head of the faculty, 
said, the motion that they had before them 
amounted practically to a revolution. The pro- 
posal was nothing less than the permission of 
the use of lead-pencils instead of pen and ink 
in the sessional examinations of the university. 
Anyone conversant with the inner hfe of a 
college will realise that to many of the pro- 
fessoriate this was nothing less than a last 
wild onslaught of socialistic democracy against 
the solid bulwarks of society. They must fight 
it back or die on the walls. To others it was 
one more step in the splendid progress of demo- 
cratic education, comparable only to such epoch- 
making things as the abandonment of the cap 
and gown, and the omission of the word "sir" 
in speaking to a professor. 

No wonder that the fight raged. Elderberry 
Foible, his fluffed white hair almost on end, beat 
in vain with his gavel for order. Finally, 
Chang of Physiology, who was a perfect dyna- 
mo of energy and was known frequently to 
work for three or four hours at a stretch, pro- 
posed that the faculty should adjourn the ques- 
tion and meet for its further discussion on 
the following Saturday morning. This revolu- 
tionary suggestion, involving work on Saturday, 
97 



Arcadian Adventures with, the Idle Bich 

reduced the meeting to a mere turmoil, in the 
midst of which Elderberry Foible proposed that 
the whole question of the use of lead-pencils 
should be adjourned till that day six months, 
and that meantime a new special committee of 
seventeen professors, with power to add to their 
number, to call witnesses and, if need be, to 
hear them, should report on the entire matter 
de novo. This motion, after the striking out 
of the words de novo and the insertion of 
ah initio, was finally carried, after which the 
faculty sank back completely exhausted into 
its chair, the need of afternoon tea and toast 
stamped on every face. 

And it was at this moment that President 
Boomer, who understood faculties as few men 
have done, quietly entered the room, laid his 
silk hat on a volume of Demosthenes, and pro- 
posed the vote of a degree of Doctor of Letters 
for Edward Tomlinson. He said that there 
was no need to remind the faculty of Tom- 
linson's services to the nation; they knew them. 
Of the members of the faculty, indeed, some 
thought that he meant the Tomlinson who wrote 
the famous monologue on the Iota Subscript, 
while others supposed that he referred to the 
celebrated philosopher Tomlinson, whose new 
book on the Indivisibility of the Inseparable 
was just then maddening the entire world. In 
98 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

any case, they voted the degree without a word, 
still faint with exhaustion. 

But while the university was conferring on 
Tomllnson the degree of Doctor of Letters, all 
over the City in business circles they were con- 
ferring on him far other titles. " Idiot," 
"Scoundrel," "Swindler," v/ere the least of 
them. Every stock and share with which his 
name was known to be connected was coming 
down with a run, wiping out the accumulated 
profits of the Wizard at the rate of a thousand 
dollars a minute. 

They not only questioned his honesty, but 
they went further and questioned his business 
capacity. 

"The man," said Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, sit- 
ting in the Mausoleum Club and breathing 
freely at last after having disposed of all his 
holdings In the Erie Auriferous, "Is an Ignora- 
mus. I asked him only the other day, quite 
casually, a perfectly simple business question. 
I said to him. 'T.C. Bonds have risen twenty- 
two and a half In a week. You know and I 
know that they are only collateral trust, and 
that the stock underneath never could and never 
would earn a par dividend. Now,' I said, for 
I wanted to test the fellow, 'tell me what that 
means?' Would you believe me, he looked 
99 



Arcadian Adventures "with the Idle Rich 

me right in the face in that stupid way of his, 
and he said, 'I don't know!' " 

"He said he didn't know!" repeated the 
listener contemptuously; "the man is a damn 
fool!" 

The reason of all this was that the results 
of the researches of the professor of geology 
were being whispered among the directorate of 
the Erie Auriferous. And the directors and 
chief shareholders were busily performing the 
interesting process called unloading. Nor did 
ever a farmer of Cahoga County in haying 
time, with a thunderstorm threatening, unload 
with greater rapidity than did the major share- 
holders of the Auriferous. Mr. Lucullus Fyshe 
traded off a quarter of his stock to an unwary 
member of the Mausoleum Club at a drop of 
thirty per cent., and being too prudent to hold 
the rest on any terms he conveyed it at once 
as a benefaction in trust to the Plutorian Or- 
phans' and Foundlings' Home; while the pur- 
chaser of Mr. Fyshe's stock, learning too late 
of his folly, rushed for his lawyers to have 
the shares conveyed as a gift to the Home for 
Incurables. 

Mr. Asmodeus Boulder transferred his en- 
tire holdings to the Imbeciles' Relief Society, 
and Mr. Furlong, senior, passed his over to a 
Chinese mission as fast as pen could traverse 
paper. 

100 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Down at the office of Skinyer and Beatem, 
the lawyers of the company, they were work- 
ing overtime drawing up deeds and conveyances 
and trusts in perpetuity, with hardly time to 
put them Into typewriting. Within twenty-four 
hours the entire stock of the company bid fair 
to be In the hands of Idiots, Orphans, Protest- 
ants, Foundlings, Imbeciles, Missionaries, Chin- 
ese, and other unfinanclal people, with Tom- 
linson the Wizard of Finance as the senior 
shareholder and majority control. iVnd 
whether the gentle Wizard, as he sat with 
mother planning his vast benefaction to Plu- 
toria University, would have felt more at home 
with his new group of fellow-shareholders than 
his old, it were hard Indeed to say. 

But meantime at the office of Skinyer and 
Beatem all was activity. For not only were 
they drafting the conveyances of the perpetual 
trusts as fast as legal brains working overtime 
could do It, but in another part of the office 
a section of the firm were busily making their 
preparations against the expected actions for 
fraud and warrants of distraint and Injunctions 
against disposal of assets and the whole battery 
of artillery which might open on them at any 
moment. And they worked Hke a corps of 
military engineers fortifying an escarpment, 
with the joy of battle In their faces. 

The storm might break at any moment. 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Already at the office of the Financial Undertone 
the type was set for a special extra with a head- 
ing three inches high: 

COLLAPSE 

OF THE ERIE CONSOLIDATED 

ARREST OF THE MAN TOMLINSON 

EXPECTED THIS AFTERNOON 

Skinyer and Beatem had paid the editor, who 
was crooked, two thousand dollars cash to hold 
back that extra for twenty-four hours; and the 
editor had paid the reporting staff, who were 
crooked, twenty-five dollars each to keep the 
news quiet, and the compositors, who were also 
crooked, ten dollars per man to hold their 
mouths shut till the morning, with the result 
that from editors and sub-editors and reporters 
and compositors the news went seething forth 
in a flood that the Erie Auriferous Consolidated 
was going to shatter into fragments like the 
bursting of a dynamite bomb. It rushed with 
a thousand whispering tongues from street to 
street, till it filled the corridors of the law- 
courts and the lobbies of the offices, and till 
every honest man that held a share of the stock 
shivered in his tracks and reached out to give, 
sell, or destroy it. Only the unwinking Idiots, 
and the mild Orphans, and the calm Deaf- 

102 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

mutes, and the impassive Chinese held tight to 
what they had. So gathered the storm, till all 
the town, like the great rotunda of the Grand 
Palaver, was filled with a silent "call for Mr. 
Tomlinson," voiceless and ominous. 

And while all this was happening, and while 
at Skinyer and Beatem's they worked with 
frantic pens and clattering type, there came a 
knock at the door, hesitant and uncertain, and 
before the eyes of the astounded office there 
stood in his wide-awake hat and long black 
coat the figure of ' the man Tomlinson ' him- 
self. 

And Skinyer, the senior partner, no sooner 
heard what Tomlinson wanted than he dashed 
across the outer office to his partner's room with 
his hyena face all excitement as he said: 

"Beatem, Beatem, come over to my room. 
This man is absolutely the biggest thing in 
America. For sheer calmness and nerve I never 
heard of anything to approach him. What do 
you think he wants to do?" 

"What?" said Beatem. 

"Why, he's giving his entire fortune to the 
university." 

"By Gadl" ejaculated Beatem, and the two 
lawyers looked at one another, lost in admira- 
tion of the marvellous genius and assurance 
of Tomlinson. 



103 



Arcadian Adventures tcith the Idle Rich 

Yet what had happened was very simple. 

Tomhnson had come back from the univer- 
sity filled with mingled hope and hesitation. 
The university, he saw, needed the money, 
and he hoped to give it his entire fortune, to 
put Dr. Boomer in a position to practically de- 
stroy the whole place. But, Hl^e many a mod- 
est man, he lacked the assurance to speak out. 
He felt that up to the present the benefactors 
of the university had been men of an entirely 
different class from himself. 

It was mother who solved the situation for 
him. 

"Well, father," she said, "there's one thing 
I've learned already since we've had money. If 
you want to get a thing done you can always 
find people to do it for you if you pay them. 
Why not go to those lawyers that manage 
things for the company and get them to arrange 
it all for you with the college?" 

As a result, Tomhnson had turned up at the 
door of the Skinyer and Beatem office. 

"Quite so, Mr. Tomlinson," said Skinyer, 
with his pen already dipped in the ink, "a per- 
fectly simple matter. I can draw up a draft of 
conveyance with a few strokes of the pen. In 
fact, we can do It on the spot." 

What he meant was, "In fact, we can do It 
so fast that I can pocket a fee of five hundred 
104 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

dollars right here and now while you have the 
money to pay me." 

"Now then," he continued, "let us see how 
It is to run." 

"Well," said Tomlinson, "I want you to 
put it that I give all my stock in the company 
to the university." 

"All of it?" said Skinyer, with a quiet smile 
to Beatem. 

"Every cent of it, sir," said Tomlinson; 
"just write down that I give all of it to the 
college." 

"Very good," said Skinyer, and he began 
to write, "I, so-and-so, and so-and-so, of the 
county of so-and-so — Cahoga, I think you said, 
Mr. Tomlinson?" 

"Yes, sir," said the Wizard, "I was raised 
there." 

" — do hereby give, assign, devise, transfer, 
and the transfer is hereby given, devised and 
assigned, all those stocks, shares, hereditaments, 
etc., which I hold in the etc., etc., all, several 
and whatever — you will observe, Mr. Tomlin- 
son, I am expressing myself with as great brev- 
ity as possible — to that institution, academy, 
college, school, university, now known and re- 
puted to be Plutoria University, of the city 
of etc., etc' " 

He paused a moment. "Now what special 
objects or purposes shall I indicate? " he asked. 
105 



Arcadian Adventures tcith the Idle Rich 

Whereupon Tomlinson explained as best he 
could, and Sklnyer, working with great rapidity, 
indicated that the benefaction was to include 
a Demolition Fund for the removal of build- 
ings, a Retirement Fund for the removal of 
professors, an Apparatus Fund for the destruc- 
tion of apparatus, and a General Sinking Fund 
for the obliteration of anything not otherwise 
mentioned. 

"And I'd like to do something, if I could, 
for Mr. Boomer himself, just as man to man," 
said Tomlinson. 

"All right," said Beatem, and he could 
hardly keep his face straight. "Give him a 
chunk of the stock — give him half a million." 

"I will," said Tomlinson; "he deserves it." 

"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Skinyer. 

And within a few minutes the whole tran- 
saction was done, and Tomlinson, filled with 
joy, was wringing the hands of Skinyer and 
Beatem, and telling them to name their own 
fee. 

They had meant to, anyway. 

"Is that legal, do you suppose?" said 
Beatem to Skinyer, after the Wizard had gone. 
"Will it hold water?" 

"Oh, I don't think so," said Skinyer, "not 
for a minute. In fact, rather the other way. 
If they make an arrest for fraudulent flota- 
io6 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

tlon, this conveyance, I should think, would 
help to send him to the penitentiary. But I 
very much doubt if they can arrest him. Mind 
you, the fellow is devilish shrewd. You know, 
and I know, that he planned this whole flota- 
tion with a full knowledge of the fraud. You 
and / know it — very good — but we know It 
more from our trained instinct In such things 
than by any proof. The fellow has managed 
to surround himself with such an air of good 
faith from start to finish that It will be deuced 
hard to get at him." 

"What will he do now?" said Beatem. 

"I tell you what he'll do. Mark my words. 
Within twenty-four hours he'll clear out and 
be out of the state, and if they want to get 
him they'll have to extradite. I tell you he's 
a man of extraordinary capacity. The rest of 
us are nowhere beside him." 

In which, perhaps, there was some truth. 

"Well, mother," said the Wizard, when he 
reached the thousand-dollar suite, after his 
Interview with Sklnyer and Beatem, his face 
Irradiated v/ith simple joy, "It's done. I've 
put the college now In a position it never was 
In before, nor any other college; the lawyers 
say so themselves." 

"That's good," said mother. 

"Yes, and it's a good thing I didn't lose the 
107 



Arcadian Adventures icitli the Idle Rich 

money when I tried to. You see, mother, what 
I hadn't realised was the good that could be 
done with all that money if a man put his heart 
into it. They can start in as soon as they like 
and tear down those buildings. My! but it's 
just wonderful what you can do with money. 
I'm glad I didn't lose' it." 

So they talked far into the evening. That 
night they slept in an Aladdin's palace filled 
with golden fancies. 

And In the morning the palace and all its 
visions fell tumbling about their heads in sud- 
den and awful catastrophe. For with Tomlin- 
son's first descent to the rotunda it broke. The 
whole great space seemed filled with the bulle- 
tins and the broadside sheets of the morning 
papers, the crowd surging to and fro buying 
the papers, men reading them as they stood, 
and everywhere in great letters there met his 
eye: 

COLLAPSE 

OF THE ERIE AURIFEROUS 

THE GREAT GOLD SWINDLE 

ARREST OF THE MAN TOMLINSON 

EXPECTED THIS MORNING 

So stood the Wizard of Finance beside a 
pillar, the paper fluttering In his hand, his eyes 
io8 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

fixed, while about him a thousand eager eyes 
and rushing tongues sent shame into his stricken 
heart. 

And there his boy Fred, sent from upstairs, 
found him; and at the sight of the seething 
crowd and his father's stricken face, aged as 
it seemed all in a moment, the boy's soul woke 
within him. What had happened he could 
not tell, only that his father stood there, dazed, 
beaten, and staring at him on every side in 
giant letters : 

ARREST OF THE MAN TOMLINSON 

*'Come, father, come upstairs," he said, and 
took him by the arm, dragging him through 
the crowd. 

In the next half-hour as they sat and waited 
for the arrest in the false grandeur of the thou- 
sand-dollar suite, — Tomlinson, his wife, and 
Fred, — the boy learnt more than all the teach- 
ing of the industrial faculty of Plutoria Uni- 
versity could have taught him in a decade. Ad- 
versity laid its hand upon him, and at its touch 
his adolescent heart turned to finer stuff than 
the salted gold of the Erie Auriferous. As 
he looked upon his father's broken figure wait- 
ing meekly for arrest, and his mother's blub- 
bered face, a great wrath burned itself into his 
soul. 

109 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 



"When the sheriff comes " said Tomlin- 

son, and his lip trembled as he spoke. He had 
no other picture of arrest than that. 

"They can't arrest you, father," broke out 
the boy. " You've done nothing. You never 
swindled them. I tell you, if they try to arrest 

you, I'll " and his voice broke and stopped 

upon a sob, and his hands clenched in passion. 

"You stay here, you and mother. I'll go 
down. Give me your money and I'll go and 
pay them and we'll get out of this and go home. 
They can't stop us; there's nothing to arrest 
you for." 

Nor was there. Fred paid the bill unmo- 
lested, save for the prying eyes and babbling 
tongues of the rotunda. 

And a few hours from that, while the town 
was still ringing with news of his downfall, the 
Wizard with his wife and son walked down 
from their thousand-dollar suite into the cor- 
ridor, their hands burdened with their satchels. 
A waiter, with something between a sneer and 
an obsequious smile upon his face, reached out 
for the valises, wondering if It was still worth 
while. 

"You get to hell out of that!" said Fred. 
He had put on again his rough store suit in 
which he had come from Cahoga County, and 
there was a dangerous look about his big 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

shoulders and his set jaw. And the waiter 
slunk back. 

So did they pass, unarrested and unhindered, 
through corridor and rotunda to the outer por- 
tals of the great hotel. 

Beside the door of the Palaver as they passed 
out was a tall official with a uniform and a 
round hat. He was called by the authorities a 
chasseur or a commissionaire, or some foreign 
name to mean that he did nothing. 

At the sight of him the Wizard's face flushed 
for a moment, with a look of his old perplexity. 

"I wonder," he began to murmur, "how 
much I ought " 

"Not a damn cent, father," said Fred, as 
he shouldered past the magnificent chasseur; 
"let him work." 

With which admirable doctrine the Wizard 
and his son passed from the portals of the 
Grand Palaver. 

Nor was there any arrest either then or later. 
In spite of the expectations of the rotunda and 
the announcements of the Financial Undertone, 
the "man Tomllnson " was not arrested, neither 
as he left the Grand Palaver nor as he stood 
waiting at the railroad station with Fred and 
mother for the outgoing train for Cahoga 
County. 

There was nothing to arrest him for. That 



Arcadian Adventures tcith the Idle Rich 

was not the least strange part of the career of 
the Wizard of Finance, For when all the 
affairs of the Erie Auriferous Consolidated 
were presently calculated up by the labours of 
Skinyer and Beatem and the legal representa- 
tives of the Orphans and the Idiots and the 
Deaf-mutes, they resolved themselves into the 
most beautiful and complete cipher conceiv- 
able. The salted gold about paid for the cost 
of the incorporation certificate: the develop- 
ment capital had disappeared, and those who 
lost most preferred to say the least about it; 
and as for Tomlinson, if one added up his gains 
on the stock market before the fall and sub- 
tracted his bill at the Grand Palaver and the 
thousand dollars which he gave to Skinyer and 
Beatem to recover his freehold on the lower 
half of his farm, and the cost of three tickets 
to Cahoga station, the debit and credit account 
balanced to a hair. 

Thus did the whole fortune of Tomlinson 
vanish in a night, even as the golden palace 
seen in the mirage of a desert sunset may fade 
before the eyes of the beholder, and leave no 
trace behind. 

It was some months after the collapse of the 
Erie Auriferous that the university conferred 
upon Tomlinson the degree of Doctor of Let- 
ters in absentia. A university must keep Its 

112 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

word, and Dean Elderberry Foible, who was 
honesty itself, had stubbornly maintained that 
a vote of the faculty of arts once taken and 
written in the minute book became as irrefrag- 
able as the Devonian rock Itself. 

So the degree was conferred. And Dean 
Elderberry Foible, standing In a long red gown 
before Dr. Boomer, seated In a long blue gown, 
read out after the ancient custom of the college 
the Latin statement of the award of the degree 
of Doctor of Letters, "Eduardus Tomlinsonius, 
vir clarisslmus, doctlsslmus, prsestlssimus," and 
a great many other things all ending in issimus. 

But the recipient was not there to receive. 
He stood at that moment with his boy Fred 
on a windy hill-side beside Lake Erie, where 
Tomlinson's Creek ran again untrammelled to 
the lake. Nor was the scene altered to the 
eye, for Tomlinson and his son had long since 
broken a hole In the dam with pickaxe and 
crowbar, and day by day the angry water car- 
ried down the vestiges of the embankment till 
all were gone. The cedar poles of the electric 
lights had been cut into fence-rails ; the wooden 
shanties of the Italian gang of Auriferous 
workers had been torn down and split Into fire- 
wood; and where they had stood, the burdocks 
and the thistles of the luxuriant summer con- 
spired to hide the traces of their shame. Nature 

113 



Arcadian Adventures "with the Idle Rich 

reached out its hand and drew Its coverlet of 
green over the grave of the vanished Eldorado. 
And as the Wizard and his son stood upon 
the hill-side, they saw nothing but the land 
sloping to the lake and the creek murmuring 
again to the willows, while the off-shore wind 
rippled the rushes of the shallow water. 



"4 



Chapter IV.— The Yahi-Bahi Oriental 
Society of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown 

MRS. RASSELYER-BROWN lived 
t)n Plutoria Avenue in a vast 
sandstone palace, in which she 
held those fashionable entertain- 
ments which have made the name of Rasselyer- 
Brown what it is. Mr. Rasselyer-Brown lived 
there also. 

The exterior of the house was more or less 
a model of the facade of an Italian palazzo of 
the sixteenth century. If one questioned Mrs. 
Rasselyer-Brown at dinner in regard to this 
(which was only a fair return for drinking 
five-dollar champagne) she answered that the 
facade was cinquecentisti, but that it reproduced 
also the Saracenic mullioned window of the 
Siennese School. But if the guest said later in 
the evening to Mr. Rasselyer-Brown that he 
understood that his house was cinquecentisti, 
he answered that he guessed it was. After 
which remark and an interval of silence Mr. 
Rasselyer-Brown would probably ask the guest 
if he was dry. 

So from that one can tell exactly the sort of 
people the Rasselyer-Browns were. 
IIS 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

In other words, Mr, Rasselyer-Brown was 
a severe handicap to Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown. 
He was more than that; the word isn't strong 
enough. He was, as Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown 
herself confessed to her confidential circle of 
three hundred friends, a drag. He was also 
a tie, and a weight, and a burden, and in Mrs. 
Rasselyer-Brown's religious moments a cruci- 
fix. Even in the early years of their married 
life, some twenty or twenty-five years ago, her 
husband had been a drag on her by being in 
the coal and wood business. It is hard for 
a woman to have to realise that her husband 
is making a fortune out of coal and wood and 
that people know it. It ties one down. What 
a woman wants most of all — this, of course, is 
merely a quotation from Mrs. Rasselyer- 
Brown's own thoughts as expressed to her three 
hundred friends — is room to expand, to grow. 
The hardest thing in the word is to be stifled: 
and there is nothing more stifling than a hus- 
band who doesn't know a Giotto from a Carlo 
Dolci, but who can distinguish nut coal from 
egg and is never asked to dinner without talking 
about the furnace. 

These, of course, were early trials. They 
had passed to some extent, or were, at any 
rate, garlanded with the roses of time. 

But the drag remained. 

Even when the retail coal and wood stage 
ii6 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

was long since over, it was hard to have to 
put up with a husband who owned a coal mine 
and who bought pulp forests instead of illumi- 
nated missals of the twelfth century. A coal 
mine is a dreadful thing at a dinner-table. It 
humbles one so before one's guests. 

It wouldn't have been so bad — this Mrs. 
Rasselyer-Brown herself admitted — if Mr. 
Rasselyer-Brown did anything. This phrase 
should be clearly understood. It meant if there 
was any one thing that he did. For instance 
if he had only collected anything. Thus, there 
was Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, who made soda-water, 
but at the same time everybody knew that he 
had the best collection of broken Italian furni- 
ture on the continent; there wasn't a sound 
piece among the lot. 

And there was the similar example of old 
Mr. Feathertop. He didn't exactly collect 
things; he repudiated the name. He was wont 
to say, "Don't call me a collector, I'm not. I 
simply pick things up. Just where I happen 
to be, Rome, Warsaw, Bucharest, anywhere" 
— and it is to be noted what fine places these 
are to happen to be. And to think that Mr. 
Rasselyer-Brown would never put his foot out- 
side of the United States! Whereas Mr. 
Feathertop would come back from what he 
called a run to Europe, and everybody would 
learn in a week that he had picked up the back 
"7 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

of a violin in Dresden (actually discovered it 
in a violin shop), and the lid of an Etruscan 
kettle (he had lighted on it, by pure chance, in 
a kettle shop in Etruria), and Mrs. Rasselyer- 
Brown would feel faint with despair at the 
nonentity of her husband. 

So one can understand how heavy her bur- 
den was. 

"My dear," she often said to her bosom 
friend. Miss Snagg, "I shouldn't mind things 
so much" (the things she wouldn't mind were, 
let us say, the two million dollars of standing 
timber which Brown Limited, the ominous 
business name of Mr. Rasselyer-Brown, were 
buying that year) "if Mr. Rasselyer-Brown 
did anything. But he does tiothing. Every 
morning after breakfast off to his wretched 
office, and never back till dinner, and in the 
evening nothing but his club, or some business 
meeting. One would think he would have more 
ambition. How I wish I had been a man." 

It was certainly a shame. 

So it came that, in almost everything she 
undertook Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown had to act 
without the least help from her husband. 
Every Wednesday, for instance, when the 
Dante Club met at her house (they selected 
four lines each week to meditate on, and then 
discussed them at lunch), Mrs. Rasselyer- 
Brown had to carry the whole burden of it — 
ii8 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

her very phrase, " the whole burden " — alone. 
Anyone who has carried four lines of Dante 
through a Moselle lunch knows what a weight 
it is. 

In all these things her husband was useless, 
quite useless. It is not right to be ashamed of 
one's husband. And to do her justice, Mrs. 
Rasselyer-Brown always explained to her three 
hundred Intimates that she was not ashamed 
of him; in fact, that she refused to be. But it 
was hard to see him brought into comparison 
at their own table with superior men. Put him, 
for instance, beside Mr. Sikleigh Snoop, the 
sex-poet, and where was he? Nowhere. He 
couldn't even understand what Mr. Snoop was 
saying. And when Mr. Snoop would stand on 
the hearth-rug with a cup of tea balanced In 
his hand, and discuss whether sex was or was 
not the dominant note in Botticelli, Mr. Rassel- 
yer-Brown would be skulking in a corner in his 
ill-fitting dress-suit. His wife would often catch 
with an agonised ear such scraps of talk as, 
"When I was first in the coal and wood busi- 
ness," or, "It's a coal that burns quicker than 
egg, but It hasn't the heating power of nut," 
or even In a low undertone the words, "If 

you're feeling dry while he's reading " 

And this at a time when everybody in the room 
ought to have been listening to Mr. Snoop. 

Nor was even this the whole burden of Mrs. 
119 



Arcadian Adventures ivith the Idle Rich 

Rasselyer-Brown. There was another part of 
it which was perhaps more real, though Mrs. 
Rasselyer-Brown herself never put it into 
words. In fact, of this part of her burden she 
never spoke, even to her bosom friend Miss 
Snagg; nor did she talk about it to the ladies 
of the Dante Club, nor did she make speeches 
on it to the members of the Women's After- 
noon Art Society, nor to the Monday Bridge 
Club. 

But the members of the Bridge Club and the 
Art Society and the Dante Club all talked about 
it among themselves. 

Stated very simply, it was this : Mr. Rassel- 
yer-Brown drank. 

It was not meant that he was a drunkard or 
that he drank too much, or anything of that 
sort. He drank. That was all. 

There was no excess about it. Mr. Rassel- 
yer-Brown, of course, began the day with an 
eye-opener — and after all, what alert man does 
not wish his eyes well open in the morning? 
He followed it usually just before breakfast 
with a bracer — and what wiser precaution can 
a business man take than to brace his break- 
fast? On his way to business he generally had 
his motor stopped at the Grand Palaver for a 
moment, if it was a raw day, and dropped in 
and took something to keep out the damp. If 
it was a cold day he took something to keep 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

out the cold, and if it was one of those clear, 
sunny days that are so dangerous to the sys- 
tem he took whatever the bar-tender (a recog- 
nised health expert) suggested to tone the sys- 
tem up. After which he could sit down in his 
office and transact more business, and bigger 
business, in coal, charcoal, wood, pulp, pulp- 
wood, and wood-pulp, in two hours than any 
other man in the business could in a week. Nat- 
urally so. For he was braced, and propped, 
and toned up, and his eyes had been opened, 
and his brain cleared, till outside of very big 
business indeed few men were on a footing 
with him. 

In fact, it was business itself which had com- 
pelled Mr. Rasselyer-Brown to drink. It is all 
very well for a junior clerk on twenty dollars a 
week to do his work on sandwiches and malted 
milk. In big business it is not possible. When 
a man begins to rise in business, as Mr. Rassel- 
yer-Brown had begun twenty-five years ago, 
he finds that if he wants to succeed he must 
cut malted milk clear out. In any position of 
responsibility a man has got to drink. No 
really big deal can be put through without it. 
If two keen men, sharp as flint, get together 
to make a deal in which each intends to outdo 
the other, the only way to succeed is for them 
to adjourn to some such place as the luncheon- 
room of the Mausoleum Club and both get 



Arcadian Adventures 'with the Idle Rich 

partially drunk. This is what is called the per- 
sonal element in business. And, beside it, 
plodding industry is nowhere. 

Most of all do these principles hold true in 
such manly out-of-door enterprises as the forest 
and timber business, where one deals constantly 
with chief rangers, and pathfinders, and wood- 
stalkers, whose very names seem to suggest a 
horn of whiskey under a hemlock-tree. 

But, — let it be repeated and carefully under- 
stood, — there was no excess about Mr. Rassel- 
yer-Brown's drinking. Indeed, whatever he 
might be compelled to take during the day, 
and at the Mausoleum Club in the evening, after 
his return from his club at night Mr. Rasselyer- 
Brown made it a fixed rule to take nothing. 
He might, perhaps, as he passed into the house, 
step into the dining-room and take a very small 
drink at the sideboard. But this he counted 
as part of the return itself, and not after it. 
And he might, if his brain were over-fatigued, 
drop down later in the night in his pajamas and 
dressing-gown when the house was quiet, and 
compose his mind with a brandy and water, or 
something suitable to the stillness of the hour. 
But this was not really a drink. Mr. Rassel- 
yer-Brown called it a nip; and of course any 
man may need a uip at a time when he would 
scorn a drink. 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

But after all, a woman may find herself 
again in her daughter. There, at least, is con- 
solation. For, as Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown her- 
self admitted, her daughter Dulphemia was 
herself again. There were, of course, differ- 
ences, certain differences of face and appear- 
ance. Mr. Snoop had expressed this fact ex- 
quisitely when he said that it was the differ- 
ence between a Burne- Jones and a Dante Ga- 
briel Rossetti. But even at that the mother 
and daughter were so alike that people, cer- 
tain people, were constantly mistaking them on 
the street. And as everybody that mistook 
them was apt to be asked to dine on five-dollar 
champagne there was plenty of temptation 
towards error. 

There is no doubt that Dulphemia Rassel- 
yer-Brown was a girl of remarkable character 
and intellect. So is any girl who has beautiful 
golden hair parted In thick bands on her fore- 
head, and deep blue eyes soft as an Italian sky. 

Even the oldest and most serious men in 
town admitted that in talking to her they were 
aware of a grasp, a reach, a depth that sur- 
prised them. Thus old Judge Longerstill, who 
talked to her at dinner for an hour on the 
jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission, felt sure from the way in which she 
looked up in his face at intervals and said, 
"How interesting!" that she had the mind 
123 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

of a lawyer. And Mr. Brace, the consulting 
engineer, who showed her on the table-cloth 
at dessert with three forks and a spoon the 
method in which the overflow of the spillway 
of the Gatun Dam is regulated, felt assured, 
from the way she leaned her face on her hand 
sideways and said, "How extraordinary!" that 
she had the brain of an engineer. Similarly 
foreign visitors to the social circles of the city 
were delighted with her. Viscount FitzThistle, 
who explained to Dulphemia for half an hour 
the intricacies of the Irish situation, was cap- 
tivated at the quick grasp she showed by ask- 
ing him at the end, without a second's hesita- 
tion, "And which are the Nationalists?" 

This kind of thing represents female intel- 
lect In Its best form. Every man that is really 
a man Is willing to recognise It at once. 

As to the young men, of course they flocked 
to the Rasselyer-Brown residence in shoals. 
There were batches of them every Sunday aft- 
ernoon at five o'clock, encased in long black 
frockcoats, sitting very rigidly in upright chairs, 
trying to drink tea with one hand. One might 
see athletic young college men of the football 
team trying hard to talk about Italian music; 
and Italian tenors from the Grand Opera doing 
their best to talk about college football. There 
were young men in business talking about art, 
and young men in art talking about religion, 
124 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

and young clergymen talking about business. 
Because, of course, the Rasselyer-Brown resi- 
dence was the kind of cultivated home where 
people of education and taste are at liberty to 
talk about things they don't know, and to utter 
freely ideas that they haven't got. It was only 
now and again, when one of the professors 
from the college across the avenue came boom- 
ing into the room, that the whole conversation 
was pulverised into dust under the hammer of 
accurate knowledge. 

This whole process was what was called, by 
those who understood such things, a salon. 
Many people said that Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's 
afternoons at home were exactly like the de- 
lightful salons of the eighteenth century: and 
whether the gatherings were or were not salons 
of the eighteenth century, there is no doubt 
that Mr. Rasselyer-Brown, under whose care 
certain favoured guests dropped quietly into 
the back alcove of the dining-room, did his best 
to put the gathering on a par with the best 
saloons of the twentieth. 

Now It so happened that there had come a 
singularly slack moment In the social life of 
the City. The Grand Opera had sung Itself 
into a huge deficit and closed. There remained 
nothing of It except the efforts of a committee 
of ladies to raise enough money to enable Sig- 
ner Puffi to leave town, and the generous at- 
125 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Bich 

tempt of another committee to gather funds 
in order to keep Signor Past! in the City. Be- 
yond this, opera was dead, though the fact 
that the deficit was nearly twice as large as it 
had been the year before showed that public 
interest in music was increasing. It was indeed 
a singularly trying time of the year. It was 
too early to go to Europe, and too late to go 
to Bermuda. It was too warm to go south, and 
yet still too cold to go north. In fact, one was 
almost compelled to stay at home — which was 
dreadful. 

As a result Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown and her 
three hundred friends moved backward and 
forward on Plutoria Avenue, seeking novelty 
In vain. They washed In waves of silk from 
tango teas to bridge afternoons. They poured 
in liquid avalanches of colour into crowded re- 
ceptions, and they sat in glittering rows and 
listened to lectures on the enfranchisement of 
the female sex. But for the moment all was 
weariness. 

Now it happened, whether by accident or 
design, that just at this moment of general 
ennui Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown and her three 
hundred friends first heard of the presence in 
the city of Mr. Yahl-Bahi, the celebrated Ori- 
ental mystic. He was so celebrated that no- 
body even thought of asking who he was or 
where he came from. They merely told one 
126 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

another, and repeated it, that he was the cele- 
brated Yahi-Bahi. They added for those who 
needed the knowledge that the name was pro- 
nounced Yahhy-Bahhy, and that the doctrine 
taught by Mr. Yahi-Bahi was Boohooism. This 
latter, if anyone inquired further, was explained 
to be a form of Shoodooism, only rather more 
intense. In fact, it was esoteric — on receipt 
of which information everybody remarked at 
once how infinitely superior the Oriental peoples 
are to ourselves. 

Now as Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown was always 
a leader in everything that was done in the best 
circles on Plutoria Avenue, she was naturally 
among the first to visit Mr. Yahi-Bahi. 

"My dear," she said, in describing after- 
wards her experience to her bosom friend. Miss 
Snagg, " it was most interesting. We drove 
away down to the queerest part of the City, 
and went to the strangest little house imagin- 
able, up the narrowest stairs one ever saw — 
quite Eastern, in fact, just like a scene out of 
the Koran." 

"How fascinating!" said Miss Snagg. But 
as a matter of fact, if Mr. Yahi-Bahi's house 
had been inhabited, as it might have been, by 
a street-car conductor or a railway brakesman, 
Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown wouldn't have thought 
it in any way peculiar or fascinating. 

"It was all hung with curtains inside," she 
127 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

went on, "with figures of snakes and Indian 
gods, perfectly weird." 

"And did you see Mr. Yahi-Bahi?" asked 
Miss Snagg. 

"Oh no, my dear. I only saw his assistant, 
Mr. Ram Spudd; such a queer little round man, 
a Bengalee, I believe. He put his back against 
a curtain and spread out his arms sideways and 
wouldn't let me pass. He said. that Mr. Yahi- 
Bahi was in meditation and musn't be dis- 
turbed." 

"How delightful!" echoed Miss Snagg. 

But in reality Mr. Yahi-Bahi was sitting be- 
hind the curtain eating a ten-cent can of pork 
and beans. 

"What I like most about eastern people," 
went on Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown, "is their won- 
derful delicacy of feeling. After I had ex- 
plained about my invitation to Mr. Yahi-Bahi 
to come and speak to us on Boohooism, and was 
going away, I took a dollar bill out of my 
purse and laid it on the table. You should 
have seen the way Mr. Ram Spudd took it. 
He made the deepest salaam and said, 'Isis 
guard you, beautiful lady.' Such perfect cour- 
tesy, and yet with the air of scorning the money. 
As I passed out I couldn't help slipping an- 
other dollar into his hand, and he took it as 
if utterly unaware of It, and muttered, 'Osiris 
keep you, O flower of women 1' And as I 
128 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

got Into the motor I gave him another dollar 
and he said, 'Osis and Osiris both prolong 
your existence, O lily of the rice-field' ; and 
after he had said it he stood beside the door 
of the motor and waited without moving till 
I left. He had such a strange, rapt look, as 
if he were still expecting something!" 

"How exquisite!" murmured Miss Snagg. 
It was her business in life to murmur such 
things as this for Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown. On 
the whole, reckoning Grand Opera tickets and 
dinners, she did very well out of it. 

"Is it .not?" said Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown. 
"So different from our men. I felt so ashamed 
of my chauffeur, our new man, you know; he 
seemed such a contrast beside Ram Spudd. The 
rude way in which he opened the door, and the 
rude way in which he climbed on to his own 
seat, and the rudeness with which he turned 
on the power — I felt positively ashamed. «And 
he so managed it — I am sure he did it on pur- 
pose — that the car splashed a lot of mud over 
Mr. Spudd as it started." 

Yet, oddly enough, the opinion of other peo- 
ple on this new chauffeur, that of Miss Dul- 
phemia Rasselyer-Brown herself, for example, 
to whose service he was specially attached, was 
very different. 

The great recommendation of him In the 
eyes of Miss -Dulphemla and her friends, and 
129 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

the thing that gave him a touch of mystery was 
— and what higher qualification can a chauffeur 
want? — that he didn't look like a chauffeur at 
all. 

"My dear Dulphle," whispered Miss Phil- 
ippa Furlong, the rector's sister (who was at 
that moment Dulphemia's second self), as they 
sat behind the new chauffeur, "don't tell me 
that he is a chauffeur, because he isn't. He can 
chauffe, of course, but that's nothing." 

For the new chauffeur had a bronzed face, 
hard as metal, and a stern eye; and when he put 
on a chauffeur's overcoat somehow it seemed.to 
turn into a military greatcoat; and even when 
he put on the round cloth cap of his profession 
it was converted straightway into a military 
shako. And by Miss Dulphemia and her 
friends It was presently reported — or was in- 
vented? — that he had served in the Philippines; 
which .explained at once the scar upon his fore- 
head, which must have been received at Iloilo, 
or Huila-Huila, or some other suitable place. 

But what affected Miss Dulphemia Brown 
herself was the splendid rudeness of the chauf- 
feur's manner. It was so different from that 
of the young men of the salon. Thus, when 
Mr. Sikleigh Snoop handed her into the car at 
any time he would dance about saying, "Allow 
me," and, "Permit me," and would dive for- 
ward to arrange the robes. But the Philippine 
130 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

chauffeur merely swung the door open and said 
to Dulphemia, "Get in," and then slammed it. 
This, of course, sent a thrill up tHe spine and 
through the imagination of Miss Dulphemia 
Rasselyer-Brown, because it showed that the 
chauffeur was a gentleman in disguise. She 
thought it very probable that he was a British 
nobleman, a younger son, very wild, of a ducal 
family; and she had her own theories as to why 
he had entered the service of the Rasselyer- 
Browns. To be quite candid about it, she ex- 
pected that the Philippine chauffeur meant to 
elope with her, and every time he drove her 
from a dinner or a dance she sat back luxuri- 
ously, wishing and expecting the elopement to 
begin. 

But for the time being the interest of Dul- 
phemia, as of everybody else that was anybody 
at all, centred round Mr. Yahi-Bahi and the 
new cult of Boohooism. 

After the visit of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown a 
great number of ladies, also in motors, drove 
down to the house of Mr. Yahi-Bahi. And all 
of them, whether they saw Mr. Yahi-Bahi him- 
self or his Bengalee assistant, Mr. Ram Spudd, 
came back delighted. 

"Such exquisite tact!" said one. "Such deli- 
cacy! As I was about to go I laid a five-dollar 
gold piece on the edge of the little table. 
131 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Mr. Spudd scarcely seemed to see It. He mur- 
mured, 'Osiris help you!' and pointed to the 
ceiling. I raised my eyes instinctively, and 
when I lowered them the money had disap- 
peared. I think he must have caused it to 
vanish." 

**Oh, I'm sure he did," said the listener. 

Others came back with wonderful stories of 
Mr. Yahi-Bahi's occult powers, especially his 
marvellous gift of reading the future. 

Mrs. Buncomhearst, who had just lost her 
third husband — by divorce — had received from 
Mr. Yahi-Bahi a glimpse Into the future that 
was almost uncanny in its exactness. She had 
asked for a divination, and Mr. Yahi-Bahi had 
effected one by causing her to lay six ten-dollar 
pieces on the table arranged in the form of a 
mystic serpent. Over these he had bent and 
peered deeply, as If seeking to unravel their 
meaning, and finally he had given her the 
prophecy, "Many things are yet to happen be- 
fore others begin." 

"How does he do it?" asked everybody. 

As a result of all this it naturally came about 
that Mr. Yahi-Bahi and Mr. Ram Spudd were 
Invited to appear at the residence of Mrs. Ras- 
selyer-Brown; and it was understood that steps 
would be taken to form a special society, to be 
known as the Yahi-Bahi Oriental Society. 
132 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Mr. SIkleigh Snoop, the sex-poet, was the 
leading spirit in the organisation. He had a 
special fitness for the task: he had actually re- 
sided in India. In fact, he had spent six weeks 
there on a stop-over ticket of a round-the-world 
635 dollar steamship pilgrimage; and he knew 
the whole country from Jehumbapore in Bhoo- 
tal to Jehumbalabad in the Carnatic. So he 
was looked upon as a great authority on India, 
China, Mongolia, and all such places, by the 
ladies of Plutoria Avenue. 

Next in importance was Mrs. Buncomhearst, 
who became later, by a perfectly natural proc- 
ess, the president of the society. She was al- 
ready president of the Daughters of the Revo- 
lution, a society confined exclusively to the de- 
scendants of Washington's officers and others; 
she was also president of the Sisters of Eng- 
land, an organisation limited exclusively to 
women born in England and elsewhere; of the 
Daughters of Kossuth, made up solely of Hun- 
garians and friends of Hungary and other na- 
tions; and of the Circle of Franz Joseph, which 
was composed exclusively of the partisans, and 
others, of Austria. In fact, ever since she had 
lost her third husband, Mrs. Buncomhearst had 
thrown herself — that was her phrase — into out- 
side activities. Her one wish was, on her own 
statement, to lose herself. So very naturally 
Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown looked at once to Mrs. 
133 



Arcadian Adventures -with the Idle liich 

Buncomhearst to preside over the meetings of 
the new society. 

The large dining-room at the Rasselyer- 
Browns' had been cleared out as a sort of audi- 
torium, and in it some fifty or sixty of Mrs. 
Rasselyer-Brown's more intimate friends had 
gathered. The whole meeting was composed 
of ladies, except for the presence of one or two 
men who represented special cases. There was, 
of course, httle Mr. Spillikins, with his vacuous 
face and football hair, who was there, as every- 
body knew, on account of Dulphemia; and 
there was old Judge Longerstill, who sat lean- 
ing on a gold-headed stick with his head side- 
ways, trying to hear some fraction of what was 
being said. He came to the gathering in the 
hope that it would prove a likely place for sec- 
onding a vote of thanks and saying a few words 
— half an hour's talk, perhaps — on the consti- 
tution of the United States. Failing that, he 
felt sure that at least someone would call him 
"this eminent old gentleman," and even that 
was better than staying at home. 

But for the most part the audience was 
composed of women, and they sat in a little 
buzz of conversation waiting for Mr. Yahi- 
Bahi. 

"I wonder," called Mrs. Buncomhearst from 
the chair, "if some lady would be good enough 
134 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

to write minutes? Miss Snagg, I wonder if you 
would be kind enough to write minutes? Could 
you?" 

"I shall be delighted," said Miss Snagg, "but 
I'm afraid there's hardly time to write them 
before we begin, is there?" 

"Oh, but it would be all right to write them 
afterwards," chorussed several ladies who 
understood such things; "it's quite often done 
that way." 

"And I should like to move that we vote a 
constitution," said a stout lady with a double 
eye-glass. 

"Is that carried?" said Mrs. Buncomhearst. 
"All those in favour please signify." 

Nobody stirred. 

"Carried," said the president. "And per- 
haps you would be good enough, Mrs. Fyshe," 
she said, turning towards the stout lady, "to 
write the constitution." 

"Do you think it necessary to write it?" said 
Mrs. Fyshe. "I should like to move, if I may, 
that I almost wonder whether it is necessary to 
write the constitution — unless, of course, any- 
body thinks that we really ought to." 

"Ladies," said the president, "you have 
heard the motion. All those against it " 

There was no sign. 

"All those in favour of it " 

There was still no sign. 
135 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"Lost," she said. 

Then, looking across at the clock on the 
mantel-piece, and realising that Mr. Yahi-Bahi 
must have been delayed and that something 
must be done, she said: 

"And now, ladies, as we have in our midst 
a most eminent gentleman who probably has 
thought more deeply about constitutions than 



All eyes turned at once towards Judge Long- 
erstill, but as fortune had it at this very mo- 
ment Mr. Sikleigh Snoop entered, followed by 
Mr. Yahi-Bahi and Mr. Ram Spudd. 

Mr. Yahi-Bahi was tall. His drooping Ori- 
ental costume made him taller still. He had a 
long brown face and liquid brown eyes of such 
depth that v^hen he turned them full upon the 
ladies before him a shiver of interest and ap- 
prehension followed in the track of his glance. 

"My dear," said Miss Snagg afterwards, "he 
seemed simply to see right through us." 

This was correct. He did. 

Mr. Ram Spudd presented a contrast to his 
superior. He was short and round, with a 
dimpled mahogany face and eyes that twinkled 
In it like little puddles of molasses. His head 
was bound in a turban and his body was Swathed 
in so many bands and sashes that he looked 
almost circular. The. clothes of both Mr. Yahi- 
Bahi and Ram Spudd were covered with the 
136 



^Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

mystic signs of Buddha and the seven serpents 
of Vishnu. 

It was impossible, of course, for Mr. Yahi- 
Bahi or Mr. Ram Spudd to address the audi- 
ence. Their knowledge of English was known 
to be too slight for that. Their communica- 
tions were expressed entirely through the me- 
dium of Mr. Snoop, and even he explained af- 
terwards that it was very difficult. The only 
languages of India which he was able to speak, 
he said, with any fluency were Gargamic and 
Gumaic, both of these being old Dravidian dia- 
lects with only two hundred and three words 
in each, and hence in themselves very difficult 
to converse in. Mr. Yahi-Bahi answered in 
what Mr. Snoop understood to be the Iramic 
of the Vedas, a very rich language, but one 
which unfortunately he did not understand. The 
dilemma is one familiar to all Oriental scholars. 

All of this Mr. Snoop explained in the open- 
ing speech which he proceeded to make. And 
after this he went on to disclose, amid deep 
interest, the general nature of the cult of Boo- 
hooism. He said that they could best under- 
stand it if he told them that its central doc- 
trine was that of Bahee. Indeed, the first aim 
of all followers of the cult was to attain to 
Bahee. Anybody who could spend a certain 
number of hours each day, say sixteen, in silent 
meditation on Boohooism would find his mind 
137 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

gradually reaching a condition of Bahee. The 
chief aim of Bahee itself was sacrifice: a true 
follower of the cult must be willing to sacrifice 
his friends, or his relatives, and even strangers, 
in order to reach Bahee. In this way one was 
able fully to realise oneself and enter into the 
Higher Indifference. Beyond this, further 
meditation and fasting — by which was meant 
living solely on fish, fruit, wine, and meat — 
one presently attained to complete Swaraj or 
Control of Self, and might in time pass into the 
absolute Nirvana, or the Negation of Empti- 
ness, the supreme goal of Boohooism. 

As a first step to all this, Mr. Snoop ex- 
plained, each neophyte or candidate for holi- 
ness must, after searching his own heart, send 
ten dollars to Mr. Yahi-Bahi. Gold, it ap- 
peared, was recognised in the cult of Boohoo- 
ism as typifying the three chief virtues, whereas 
silver or paper money did not; even national 
bank-notes were only regarded as do or, a half- 
way palliation; and outside currencies such as 
Canadian or Mexican bills were looked upon as 
entirely boo, or contemptible. The Oriental 
view of money, said Mr. Snoop, was far su- 
perior to our own, but it also might be attained 
by deep thought, and, as a beginning, by send- 
ing ten dollars to Mr. Yahi-Bahi. 

After this Mr. Snoop, in conclusion, read a 
very beautiful Hindu poem, translating it as he 
138 



Arcadian Adventure'^ with the Idle Rich 

went along. It began, "O cow, standing be- 
side the Ganges, and apparently without visible 
occupation," and it was voted exquisite by all 
who heard it. The absence of rhyme and the 
entire removal of ideas marked it as far be- 
yond anything reached as yet by Occidental 
culture. 

When Mr. Snoop had concluded the presi- 
dent called upon Judge Longerstill for a few 
words of thanks, which he gave, followed by a 
brief talk on the constitution of the United 
States. 

After this the society was declared consti- 
tuted, Mr. Yahi-Bahi made four salaams, one 
to each point of the compass, and the meeting 
dispersed. 

And that evening, over fifty dinner tables, 
everybody discussed the nature of Bahee, and 
tried in vain to explain it to men too stupid to 
understand. 

Now it so happened that on the very after- 
noon of this meeting at Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's, 
the Philippine chauffeur did a strange and pe- 
cuhar thing. He first asked Mr. Rasselyer- 
Brown for a few hours' leave of absence to at- 
tend the funeral of his mother-in-law. This 
was a request which Mr. Rasselyer-Brown, on 
principle, never refused to a man-servant. 

Whereupon, the Philippine chauffeur, no 
139 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

longer attired as one, visited the residence of 
Mr. Yahi-Bahi. He let himself in with a mar- 
vellous little key which he produced from a very 
wonderful bunch of such. He was in the house 
for nearly half an hour, and when he emerged 
the notebook in his breast pocket, had there 
been an eye to read it, would have been seen to 
be filled with stranger details in regard to Ori- 
ental mysticism than even Mr. Yahi-Bahi had 
given to the world. So strange were they that 
before the Philippine chauffeur returned to the 
Rasselyer-Brown residence he telegraphed cer- 
tain and sundry parts of them to New York. 
But why he should have addressed them to the 
head of a detective bureau instead of to a col- 
lege of Oriental research it passes the imagina- 
tion to conceive. But as the chauffeur duly re- 
appeared at motor-time In the evening the inci- 
dent passed unnoticed. 

It is beyond the scope of the present narra- 
tive to trace the progress of Boohooism during 
the splendid but brief career of the Yahi-Bahi 
Oriental Society. There could be no doubt of 
its success. Its principles appealed with great 
strength to all the more cultivated among the 
ladies of Plutoria Avenue. There was some- 
thing in the Oriental mysticism of its doctrines 
which rendered previous belief stale and puerile. 
The practice of the sacred rites began at once. 
140 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

The ladies' counters of the Plutorian banks 
were Inundated with requests for ten-dollar 
pieces in exchange for bank-notes. At dinner 
In the best houses nothing was eaten except a 
thin soup (or bru), followed by fish, succeeded 
by meat or by game, especially such birds as 
are particularly pleasing to Buddha, as the 
partridge, the pheasant, and the woodcock. 
After this, except for fruits and wine, the prin- 
ciple of Swaraj, or denial of self, was rigidly 
imposed. Special Oriental dinners of this sort 
were given, followed by listening to the reading 
of Oriental poetry, with closed eyes and with 
the mind as far as possible in a state of Stoj, 
or Negation of Thought. 

By this means the general doctrine of Boo- 
hooism spread rapidly. Indeed, a great many 
of the members of the society soon attained to 
a stage of Bahee, or the Higher Indifference, 
that it would have been hard to equal outside 
of Juggapore or Jumbumbabad. For example, 
when Mrs. Buncomhearst learned of the re- 
marriage of her second husband — she had lost 
him three years before, owing to a difference 
of opinion on the emancipation of women — she 
shewed the most complete Bahee possible. And 
when Miss Snagg learned that her brother In 
Venezuela had died — a very sudden death 
brought on by drinking rum for seventeen years 
— and had left her ten thousand dollars, the 
141 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Bahee which she exhibited almost amounted to 
Nirvana. 

In fact, the very general dissemination of the 
Oriental idea became more and more notice- 
able with each week that passed. Some mem- 
bers attained to so complete a Bahee, or Higher 
Indifference, that they even ceased to attend the 
meetings of the society; others reached a 
Swaraj, or Control of Self, so great that they 
no longer read its pamphlets; while others again 
actually passed into Nirvana, to a Complete 
Negation of Self, so rapidly that they did not 
even pay their subscriptions. 

But features of this sort, of course, are fa- 
miliar wherever a successful occult creed makes 
its way against the prejudices of the multitude. 

The really notable part of the whole experi- 
ence was the marvellous demonstration of oc- 
cult power which attended the final seance of 
the society, the true nature of which is still 
wrapped in mystery. 

For some weeks it had been rumoured that a 
very special feat or demonstration of power by 
Mr. Yahi-Bahi was under contemplation. In 
fact, the rapid spread of Swaraj and of Nir- 
vana among the members rendered such a feat 
highly desirable. Just what form the demon- 
stration would take was for some time a matter 
of doubt. It was whispered at first that Mr. 
Yahi-Bahi would attempt the mysterious east- 
142 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

ern rite of burying Ram Spudd alive in the 
garden of the Rasselyer-Brown residence and 
leaving him there in a state of Stoj, or Sus- 
pended Inanition, for eight days. But this pro- 
ject was abandoned, owing to some doubt, ap- 
parently, in the mind of Mr. Ram Spudd as to 
his astral fitness for the high state of Stoj 
necessitated by the experiment. 

At last it became known to the members of 
the Poosh, or Inner Circle, under the seal of 
confidence, that Mr. Yahi-Bahi would attempt 
nothing less than the supreme feat of occultism, 
namely, a reincarnation, or more correctly a 
reastralisation of Buddha. 

The members of the Inner Circle shivered 
with a luxurious sense of mystery when they 
heard of it. 

"Has it ever been done before?" they asked 
of Mr. Snoop. 

"Only a few times," he said; "once, I be- 
lieve, by Jam-bum, the famous Yogi of the 
Carnatic; once, perhaps twice, by Boohoo, the 
founder of the sect. But it is looked upon as 
extremely rare. Mr. Yahi tells me that the 
great danger is that, if the slightest part of the 
formula is incorrectly observed, the person at- 
tempting the astralisation is swallowed up into 
nothingness. However, he declares himself 
willing to try." 



143 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

The seance was to take place at Mrs. Ras- 
selyer-Brown's residence, and was to be at mid- 
night. 

"At midnight I" said each member in surprise. 
And the answer was, "Yes, at midnight. You 
see, midnight here is exactly midday in Allah- 
abad in India." 

This explanation was, of course, ample. 
"Midnight," repeated everybody to everybody 
else, "is exactly midday in Allahabad." That 
made things perfectly clear. Whereas if mid- 
night had been midday in Timbuctoo the whole 
situation would have been different. 

Each of the ladies was requested to bring to 
the seance some ornament of gold; but it must 
be plain gold, without any setting of stones. 

It was known already that, according to the 
cult of Boohooism, gold, plain gold, is the seat 
of the three virtues — beauty, wisdom, and 
grace. Therefore, according to the creed of 
Boohooism, anyone who has enough gold, plain 
gold, is endowed with these virtues and is all 
right. All that is needed is to have enough of 
it; the virtues follow as a consequence. 

But for the great experiment the gold used 
must not be set with stones, with the one excep- 
tion of rubles, which are known to be endowed 
with the three attributes of Hindu worship — 
modesty, loquacity, and pomposity. 

In the present case it was found that as ^ 
144 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

number of ladies had nothing but gold orna- 
ments set with diamonds, a second exception 
was made; especially as Mr. Yahi-Bahi, on ap- 
peal, decided that diamonds, though less pleas- 
ing to Buddha than rubies, possessed the 
secondary Hindu virtues of divisibility, mova- 
bility, and disposability. 

On the evening in question the residence of 
Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown might have been ob- 
served at midnight wrapped in utter darkness. 
No hghts were shown. A single taper, brought 
by Ram Spudd from the Taj Mohal, and resem- 
bling in its outer texture those sold at the five- 
and-ten store near Mr. Spudd's residence, 
burned on a small table in the vast dining-room. 
The servants had been sent upstairs and ex- 
pressly enjoined to retire at half past ten. 
Moreover, Mr. Rasselyer-Brown had had to 
attend that evening, at the Mausoleum Club, a 
meeting of the trustees of the Church of St. 
Asaph, and he had come home at eleven o'clock, 
as he always did after diocesan work of this 
sort, quite used up; in fact, so fatigued that he 
had gone upstairs to his own suite of rooms 
sideways, his knees bending under him. So 
utterly used up was he with his church work 
that, as far as any interest in what might be 
going on in his own residence, he had attained 
to a state of Bahee, or Higher Indifference^ 
that even Buddha might have envied. 
145 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

The guests, as had been arranged, arrived 
noiselessly and on foot. All motors were left 
at least a block away. They made their way 
up the steps of the darkened house, and were 
admitted without ringing, the door opening 
silently in front of them. Mr. Yahi-Bahi and 
Mr. Ram Spudd, who had arrived on foot car- 
rying a large parcel, were already there, and 
were behind a screen in the darkened room, 
reported to be in meditation. 

At a whispered word from Mr. Snoop, who 
did duty at the door, all furs and wraps were 
discarded in the hall and laid in a pile. Then 
the guests passed silently into the great dining- 
room. There was no hght in it except the dim 
taper which stood on a little table. On this 
table each guest, as instructed, laid an ornament 
of gold, and at the same time was uttered in a 
low voice the word "Ksvoo." This means, 
"O Buddha, I herewith lay my unworthy offer- 
ing at thy feet; take it and keep it for ever." 
It was explained that this was only a form. 

"What is he doing?" whispered the assem- 
bled guests as they saw Mr. Yahi-Bahi pass 
across the darkened room and stand in front of 
the sideboard. 

"Hush!" said Mr. Snoop; "he's laying the 
propitiatory offering for Buddha." 
146 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"It's an Indian rite," whispered Mrs. Ras- 
selyer-Brown. 

Mr. Yahi-Bahl could be seen dimly moving 
to and fro in front of the sideboard. There 
was a faint clinking of glass. 

"He has to set out a glass of Burmese brandy, 
powdered over with nutmeg and aromatics," 
whispered Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown. "I had the 
greatest hunt to get it all for him. He said that 
nothing but Burmese brandy would do, because 
in the Hindu religion the god can only be in- 
voked with Burmese brandy, or, failing that, 
Hennessy's with three stars, which Is not en- 
tirely displeasing to Buddha." 

"The aromatics," whispered Mr. Snoop, 
"are supposed to waft a perfume or incense to 
reach the nostrils of the god. The glass of 
propitiatory wine and the aromatic spices are 
mentioned in the Vishnu-Buddayat." 

Mr. Yahi-Bahl, his preparations completed, 
was nov/ seen to stand in front of the sideboard 
'bowing deeply four times In an Oriental salaam. 
The light of the single taper had by this time 
burned so dim that his movements were vague 
and uncertain. His body cast great flickering 
shadows on the half-seen wall. From his throat 
there Issued a low wail in which the word wahl 
wah ! could be distinguished. 

The excitement was intense. 
147 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"What does 'wah' mean?" whispered Mr. 
Spillikins. 

"Hush!" said Mr. Snoop; "it means, *0 
Buddha, wherever thou art in thy lofty Nir- 
vana, descend yet once in astral form before our 
eyesl' " 

Mr. Yahi-Bahi rose. He was seen to place 
one finger on his lips and then, silently moving 
across the room, he disappeared behind the 
screen. Of what Mr. Ram Spudd was doing 
during this period there is no record. It was 
presumed that he was still praying. 

The stillness was now absolute. 

"We must wait in perfect silence," whispered 
Mr. Snoop from the extreme tips of his lips. 

Everybody sat in strained intensity, silent, 
looking towards the vague outline of the side- 
board. 

The minutes passed. No one moved. All 
were spellbound in expectancy. 

Still the minutes passed. The taper had flick- 
ered down till the great room was almost in 
darkness. 

Could it be that by some neglect in the prepa- 
rations, the substitution perhaps of the wrong 
brandy, the astralisation could not be effected? 

But no. 

Quite suddenly, it seemed, everybody in the 
darkened room was aware of a presence. That 
was the word as afterwards repeated in a hun- 
148 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

dred confidential discussions. A presence. One 
couldn't call it a body. It wasn't. It was a 
figure, an astral form, a presence. 

"Buddha !" they gasped as they looked at It. 

Just how the figure entered the room, the 
spectators could never afterwards agree. Some 
thought It appeared through the wall, deliber- 
ately astralising itself as it passed through the 
bricks. Others seemed to have seen it pass In 
at the further door of the room, as If It had 
astralised itself at the foot of the stairs In the 
back of the hall outside. 

Be that as it may, there it stood before them, 
the astralised shape of the Indian deity, so that 
to every lip there rose the half-articulated word, 
"Buddha"; or at least to every lip except 
that of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown. From her there 
came no sound. 

The figure as afterwards described was at- 
tired In a long shirdk, such as Is worn by the 
Grand Llama of Tibet, and resembling. If the 
comparison were not profane, a modern dress- 
ing-gown. The legs, If one might so call them, 
of the apparition were enwrapped in loose pun- 
jahamas, a word which Is said to be the origin 
of the modern pyjamas; while the feet, If they 
were feet, were encased In loose slippers. 

Buddha moved slowly across the room. Ar- 
rived at the sideboard the astral figure paused, 
and even in the uncertain light Buddha was 
149 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

seen to raise and drink the propitiatory offer- 
ing. That much was perfectly clear. Whether 
Buddha spoke or not is doubtful. Certain of 
the spectators thought that he said, "Must a 
fagotnit," which is Hindustanee for "Blessings 
on this house." To Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's 
distracted mind it seemed as if Buddha said, 
"I must have forgotten it." But this wild fancy 
she never breathed to a soul. 

Silently Buddha recrossed the room, slowly 
wiping one arm across his mouth after the 
Hindu gesture of farewell. 

For perhaps a full minute after the disap- 
pearance of Buddha not a soul moved. Then 
quite suddenly Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown, unable 
to stand the tension any longer, pressed an 
electric switch and the whole room was flooded 
with light. 

There sat the affrighted guests staring at one 
another with pale faces. 

But, to the amazement and horror of all, the 
little table in the centre stood empty — not a 
single gem, not a fraction of the gold that had 
lain upon it was left. All had disappeared. 

The truth seemed to burst upon everyone at 
once. There was no doubt of what had hap- 
pened. 

The gold and the jewels had been deastral- 
Ised. Under the occult power of the vision 
150 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

they had been demonetised, engulfed into the 
astral plane along with the vanishing Buddha. 

Filled with the sense of horror still to come, 
somebody pulled aside the little screen. They 
fully expected to find the lifeless bodies of Mr. 
Yahi-Bahi and the faithful Ram Spudd. What 
they saw before them was more dreadful still. 
The outer Oriental garments of the two de- 
votees lay strewn upon the floor. The long 
sash of Yahi-Bahi and the thick turban of Ram 
Spudd were side by side near them; almost sick- 
ening in its repulsive realism was the thick 
black head of hair of the junior devotee, ap- 
parently torn from his scalp as if by lightning 
and bearing a horrible resemblance to the cast- 
off wig of an actor. 

The truth was too plain. 

"They are engulfed!" cried a dozen voices 
at once. 

It was realised in a flash that Yahi-Bahi and 
Ram Spudd had paid the penalty of their dar- 
ing with their Hves. Through some fatal neg- 
lect, against which they had fairly warned the 
participants of the seance, the two Orientals 
had been carried bodily in the astral plane. 

"How dreadful!" murmured Mr. Snoop. 
"We must have made some awful error," 

"Are they deastralised?" murmured Mrs. 
Buncomhearst. 

"Not a doubt of it," said Mr. Snoop. 
151 



Arcadian Adventures tvith the Idle Rich 

And then another voice in the group was 
heard to say, "We must hush it up. We can't 
have it known!" 

On which a chorus of voices joined in, every- 
body urging that it must be hushed up. 

"Couldn't you try to reastralise them?" said 
somebody to Mr. Snoop. 

"No, no," said Mr. Snoop, still shaking. 
"Better not try to. We must hush it up if we 
can." 

And the general assent to this sentiment 
shewed that after all the principles of Bahee, 
or Indifference to Others, had taken a real root 
in the society. 

"Hush it up," cried everybody, and there 
was a general move rowards the hall. 

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Mrs. Buncom- 
hearst; "our wraps!" 

"Deastralised!" said the guests. 

There was a moment of further consterna- 
tion as everybody gazed at the spot where the 
ill-fated pile of furs and wraps had lain. 

"Never mind," said everybody, "let's go 
without them — don't stay. Just think if the 
police should " 

And at the word police, all of a sudden there 
was heard in the street the clanging of a bell 
and the racing gallop of the horses of the police 
patrol waggon. 

152 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"The police!" cried everybody. "Hush it 
up! Hush it up!" 

For of course the principles of Bahee are not 
known to the police. 

In another moment the door bell of the house 
rang with a long and violent peal, and In a sec- 
ond as it seemed, the whole hall was filled with 
bulky figures uniformed in blue. 

"It's all right, Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown," 
cried a loud, firm voice from the sidewalk. "We 
have them both. Everything is here. We got 
them before they'd gone a block. But if you 
don't mind, the police must get a couple of 
names for witnesses in the warrant." 

It was the Philippine chauffeur. But he was 
no longer attired as such. He wore the uni- 
form of an Inspector of police, and there was 
the metal badge of the Detective Department 
now ostentatiously outside his coat. 

And beside him, one on each side of him, 
there stood the deastralised forms of Yahl- 
Bahi and Ram Spudd. They wore long over- 
coats, doubtless the contents of the magic par- 
cels, and the Philippine chauffeur had a grip of 
iron on the neck of each as they stood. Mr. 
Spudd had lost his Oriental hair, and the face 
of Mr. Yahi-Bahi, perhaps In the struggle 
which had taken place, had been scraped white 
in patches. 

They were making no attempt to break away. 
153 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle liich 

Indeed, Mr. Spudd, with that complete Bahee, 
or Submission to Fate, which is attained only 
by long services in state penitentiaries, was 
smiling and smoking a cigarette. 

"We were waiting for them," explained a 
tall police officer to the two or three ladies who 
now gathered round him with a return of cour- 
age. "They had the stuff in a hand-cart and 
were pushing it away. The chief caught them 
at the corner, and rang the patrol from there. 
You'll find everything all right, I think, ladies," 
he added, as a burly assistant was seen carrying 
an armload of furs up the steps. 

Somehow many of the ladies realised at the 
moment what cheery, safe, reliable people po- 
licemen in blue are, and what a friendly, fa- 
miliar shelter they offer against the wiles of 
Oriental occultism. 

"Are they old criminals?" someone asked. 

"Yes, ma'am. They've worked this same 
thing in four cities already, and both of them 
have done time, and lots of it. They've only 
been out six months. No need to worry over 
them," he concluded with a shrug of the 
shoulders. 

So the furs were restored and the gold and 
the jewels parcelled out among the owners, and 
in due course Mr. Yahi-Bahi and Mr. Ram 
Spudd were lifted up into the patrol waggon, 
where they seated themselves with a composure 
IS4 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

worthy of the best traditions of Jehumbabah 
and Bahoolapore. In fact, Mr. Spudd was 
heard to address the police as "boys," and to 
remark that they had "got them good" that 
time. 

So the seance ended and the guests vanished, 
and the Yahi-Bahi Society terminated Itself 
without even a vote of dissolution. 

And in all the later confidential discussions 
of the episode only one point of mysticism re- 
mained. After they had time really to reflect 
on it, free from all danger of arrest, the mem- 
bers of the society realised that on one point 
the police were entirely off the truth of things. 
For Mr. Yahi-Bahi, whether a thief or not, and 
whether he came from the Orient, or, as the 
police said, from Missouri, had actually suc- 
ceeded in reastralising Buddha. 

Nor was anyone more emphatic on this point 
than Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown herself. 

"For after all," she said, "If it was not Bud- 
dha, who was it?" 

And the question was never answered. 



iSS 



Chapter V. — The Love Story of Mr. Peter 
Spillikins 



ALMOST any day, on Plutoria Avenue 
or thereabouts, you may see little 
Mr. Spillikins out walking with his 
four tall sons, who are practically as 
old as himself. 

To be exact, Mr. Spillikins is twenty-four, 
and Bob, the oldest of the boys, must be at least 
twenty. Their exact ages are no longer known, 
because, by a dreadful accident, their mother 
forgot them. This was at a time when the boys 
were all at Mr. Wackem's Academy for Excep- 
tional Youths In the foothills of Tennessee, and 
while their mother, Mrs. Everleigh, was spend- 
ing the winter on the Riviera and felt that for 
their own sake she must not allow herself to 
have the boys with her. 

But now, of course, since Mrs. Everleigh has 
remarried and become Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins 
there is no need to keep them at Mr. Wackem's 
any longer. Mr. Spillikins is able to look after 
them. 

Mr. Spillikins generally wears a little top hat 
and an English morning coat. The boys are in 
Eton jackets and black trousers, which, at their 
is6 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

mother's wish, are kept just a little too short for 
them. This is because Mrs. Everleigh-Spilli- 
kins feels that the day will come some day — 
say fifteen years hence, — when the boys will no 
longer be children, and meantime it is so nice 
to feel that they are still mere boys. Bob is the 
eldest, but Sib the youngest is the tallest, where- 
as Willie the third boy is the dullest, although 
this has often been denied by those who claim 
that Gib the second boy is just a trifle duller. 
Thus at any rate there is a certain equality and 
good fellowship all round. 

Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins is not to be seen 
walking with them. She is probably at the race- 
meet, being taken there by Captain Cormorant 
of the United States navy, which Mr. Spillikins 
considers very handsome of him. Every now 
and then the captain, being in the navy, is com- 
pelled to be at sea for perhaps a whole after- 
noon or even several days; in which case Mrs. 
Everleigh-Spillikins is very g^erally taken to 
the Hunt Club or the Country Club by Lieu- 
tenant Hawk, which Mr. Spillikins regards as 
awfully thoughtful of him. Or if Lieutenant 
Hawk is also out of town for the day, as he 
sometimes has to be, because he is in the United 
States army, Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins is taken 
out by old Colonel Shake, who is in the State 
militia and who is at leisure all the time. 

During their walks on Plutoria Avenue one 
157 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

may hear the four boys addressing Mr. Spilli- 
kins as "father" and "dad" in deep bull-frog 
voices. 

"Say, dad," drawls Bob, "couldn't we all go 
to the ball game?" 

"No, say, dad," says Gib, "let's all go back 
to the house and play five-cent pool In the bil- 
liard-room?" 

"All right, boys," says Mr. Spillikins. And a 
few minutes later one may see them all hustling 
up the steps of the Everleigh-SpUllklns's man- 
sion, quite eager at the prospect, and all talking 
together. 

Now the whole of this daily panorama, to the 
eye that can read it, represents the outcome of 
the tangled love story of Mr. Spillikins, which 
culminated during the summer house-party at 
Castel Castegglo, the woodland retreat of Mr. 
and Mrs. Newberry. 

But to understand the story one must turn 
back a year or so to the time when Mr. Peter 
Spillikins used to walk on Plutoria Avenue 
alone, or sit in the Mausoleum Club listening 
to the advice of people who told him that he 
really ought to get married. 

In those days the first thing that one noticed 
about Mr. Peter SpiHIklns was his exalted view 
of the other sex. Every time he passed a beau- 
is8 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

tiful woman in the street he said to himself, "I 
say!" Even when he met a moderately beauti- 
ful one he murmured, "By Jove!" When an 
Easter hat went sailing past, or a group of sum- 
mer parasols stood talking on a leafy corner, 
Mr. Spillikins ejaculated, "My word!" At the 
opera and at tango teas his projecting blue eyes 
almost popped out of his head. 

Similarly, if he happened to be with one of 
his friends, he would murmur, "I say, do look 
at that beautiful girl," or would exclaim, "I 
say, don't look, but isn't that an awfully pretty 
girl across the street?" or at the opera, "Old 
man, don't let her see you looking, but do you 
see that lovely girl in the box opposite?" 

One must add to this that Mr. Spillikins, in 
spite of his large and bulging blue eyes, enjoyed 
the heavenly gift of short sight. As a conse- 
quence he lived in a world of amazingly beauti- 
ful women. And as his mind was focussed in 
the same way as his eyes he endowed them with 
all the virtues and graces which ought to adhere 
to fifty-dollar flowered hats and cerise parasols 
with ivory handles. 

Nor, to do him justice, did Mr. Spillikins 
confine this attitude to his view of women alone. 
He brought is to bear on everything. Every 
time he went to the opera he would come away 
enthusiastic, saying, "By Jove, isn't it simply 
splendid! Of course I haven't the ear to appre- 
159 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

date it — I'm not musical, you know — but even 
with the little that I know, it's great; it abso- 
lutely puts me to sleep." And of each new 
novel that he bought he said, "It's a perfectly 
wonderful book! Of course I haven't the head 
to understand it, so I didn't finish it, but it's 
simply thrilling." Similarly with painting, "It's 
one of the most marvellous pictures I ever saw," 
he would say. "Of course I've no eye for pic- 
tures, and I couldn't see anything in it, but it's 
wonderful !" 

The career of Mr. Spillikins up to the point 
of which we are speaking had hitherto not been 
very satisfactory, or at least not from the point 
of view of Mr. Boulder, who was his uncle and 
trustee. Mr. Boulder's first idea had been to 
have Mr. Spillikins attend the university. Dr. 
Boomer, the president, had done his best to 
spread abroad the idea that a university educa- 
tion was perfectly suitable even for the rich; 
that it didn't follow that because a man was a 
university graduate he need either work or pur- 
sue his studies any further; that what the uni- 
versity aimed to do was merely to put a certain 
stamp upon a man. That was all. And this 
stamp, according to the tenor of the president's 
convocation addresses, was perfectly harmless. 
No one ought to be afraid of it. As a result, 
a great many of the very best young men in the 
City, who had no need for education at all, 
i6o 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

were beginning to attend college. "It marked," 
said Dr. Boomer, "a revolution." 

Mr. Spillikins himself was fascinated with 
his studies. The professors seemed to him liv- 
ing wonders. 

"By Jove !" he said, "the professor of mathe- 
matics is a marvel. You ought to see him ex- 
plaining trigonometry on the blackboard. You 
can't understand a word of it." He hardly 
knew which of his studies he liked best. 
"Physics," he said, "is a wonderful study. I 
got five per cent, in it. But, by Jove ! I had 
to work for it. I'd go in for it altogether if 
they'd let me." 

But that was just the trouble — they wouldn't. 
And so in course of time Mr. Spillikins was com- 
pelled, for academic reasons, to abandon his 
life-work. His last words about it were, "Gad ! 
I nearly passed in trigonometry I" and he al- 
ways said afterwards that he had got a tre- 
mendous lot out of the university. 

After that, as he had to leave the university, 
his trustee, Mr. Boulder, put Mr. Spillikins into 
business. It was, of course, his own business, 
one of the many enterprises for which Mr. Spil- 
likins, ever since he was twenty-one, had already 
been signing documents and countersigning 
cheques. So Mr. Spillikins found himself in a 
mahogany office selling wholesale oil. And he 
i6i 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

liked it. He said that business sharpened one 
up tremendously. 

"I'm afraid, Mr. Spillikins," a caller in the 
mahogany office would say, "that we can't meet 
you at five dollars. Four seventy is the best we 
can do on the present market." 
r' "My dear chap," said Mr. Spillikins, "that's 
all right. After all, thirty cents isn't much, eh 
what? Dash it, old man, we won't fight about 
thirty cents. How much do you want?" 

"Well, at four seventy we'll take twenty 
thousand barrels." 

"By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins; "twenty 
thousand barrels. Gad! you want a lot, don't 
you? Pretty big sale, eh, for a beginner like 
me? I guess uncle'U be tickled to death." 

So tickled was he that after a few weeks of 
oil selling Mr. Boulder urged Mr. Spillikins 
to retire, and wrote off many thousand dollars 
from the capital value of his estate. 

So after this there was only one thing for 
Mr. Spillikins to do, and everybody told him so 
— namely, to get married. 

"Spillikins," said his friends at the club 
after they had taken all his loose money over 
the card table, "you ought to get married." 

"Think so?" said Mr. Spillikins. 

Goodness knows he was willing enough. In 
fact, up to this point Mr. Spillikins's whole 
162 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

existence had been one long aspiring sigh di- 
rected towards the joys of matrimony. 

In his brief college days his timid glances had 
wandered by an irresistible attraction towards 
the seats on the right-hand side of the class- 
room, where the girls of the first year sat, with 
golden pigtails down their backs, doing trigo- 
nometry. 

He would have married any of them. But 
when a girl can work out trigonometry at sight, 
what use can she possibly have for marriage? 
None. Mr. Spillikins knew this and it kept him 
silent. And even when the most beautiful girl 
in the class married the demonstrator and thus 
terminated her studies in her second year. Spil- 
likins realised that it was only because the man 
was, undeniably, a demonstrator and knew 
things. 

Later on, when Spillikins went into business 
and into society, the same fate pursued him. 
He loved, for at least six months, Georgiana 
McTeague, the niece of the presbyterian min- 
ister of St. Osoph's. He loved her so well that 
for her sake he temporarily abandoned his pew 
at St. Asaph's, which was episcopalian, and lis- 
tened to fourteen consecutive sermons on hell. 
But the affair got no further than that. Once 
or twice, indeed, SpiUikins walked home with 
Georgiana from church and talked about hell 
with her; and once her uncle asked him into the 
163 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

manse for cold supper after evening service, 
and they had a long talk about hell all through 
the meal and upstairs in the sitting-room after- 
wards. But somehow Spillikins could get no 
further with it. He read up all he could about 
hell so as to be able to talk with Georgiana, 
but in the end it failed: a young minister fresh 
from college came and preached at St. Osoph's 
six special sermons on the absolute certainty of 
eternal punishment, and he married Miss Mc- 
Teague as a result of it. 

And meantime Mr. Spillikins had got en- 
gaged, or practically so, to Adelina Lightleigh; 
not that he had spoken to her, but he considered 
himself bound to her. For her sake he had 
given up hell altogether, and was dancing till 
two in the morning and studying auction bridge 
out of a book. For a time he felt so sure that 
she meant to have him that he began bringing 
his greatest friend, Edward Ruff, of the college 
football team, of whom Spillikins was very 
proud, up to the Lightleighs' residence. He 
specially wanted Adelina and Edward to be 
great friends, so that Adelina and he might ask 
Edward up to the house after he was married. 
And they got to be such great friends, and so 
quickly, that they were married in New York 
that autumn. After which Spillikins used to 
be invited up to the house by Edward and 
Adelina. They both used to tell him how much 
164 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

they owed him ; and they too used to join In the 
chorus and say, "You know, Peter, you're aw- 
fully silly not to get married." 

Now all this had happened and finished at 
about the time when the Yahi-Bahi Society ran 
its course. At its first meeting Mr. Spillikins 
had met Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown. At the 
very sight of her he began reading up the life 
of Buddha and a translation of the Upanishads 
so as to fit himself to aspire to live with her. 
Even when the society ended in disaster Mr. 
Spillikins's love only burned the stronger. Con- 
sequently, as soon as he knew that Mr. and 
Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown were going away for 
the summer, and that Dulphemia was to go to 
stay with the Newberrys at Castel Casteggio, 
this latter place, the summer retreat of the 
Newberrys, became the one spot on earth for 
Mr. Peter Spillikins. 

Naturally, therefore, Mr. Spillikins was 
presently transported to the seventh heaven 
when in due course of time he received a note 
which said, "We shall be so pleased if you can 
come out and spend a week or two with us here. 
We will send the car down to the Thursday 
train to meet you. We live here in the simplest 
fashion possible ; in fact, as Mr. Newberry says, 
we are just roughing it, but I am sure you don't 
mind for a change. Dulphemia Is with us, but 
we are quite a small party." 
165 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

The note was signed "Margaret Newberry" 
and was written on heavy cream paper with a 
silver monogram such as people use when 
roughing it. 

The Newberrys, like everybody else, went 
away from town in the summer-time. Mr. 
Newberry being still in business, after a fash- 
ion, it would not have looked well for him to 
remain in town throughout the year. It would 
have created a bad impression on the market 
as to how much he was making. 

In fact, in the early summer everybody went 
out of town. The few who ever revisited the 
place in August reported that they hadn't seen 
a soul on the street. 

It was a sort of longing for the simple life, 
for nature, that came over everybody. Some 
people sought it at the seaside, where nature 
had thrown out her broad plank walks and her 
long piers and her vaudeville shows. Others 
sought it in the heart of the country, where 
nature had spread her oiled motor roads and 
her wayside inns. Others, like the Newberrys, 
preferred to "rough it" in country residences 
of their own. 

Some of the people, as already said, went for 
business reasons, to avoid the suspicion of hav- 
ing to work all the year round. Others went 
to Europe to avoid the reproach of living al- 
i66 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

ways in America. Others, perhaps most people^ 
went for medical reasons, being sent away by 
their doctors. Not that they were ill ; but the 
doctors of Plutoria Avenue, such as Doctor 
Slyder, always preferred to send all their pa- 
tients out of town during the summer months. 
No well-to-do doctor cares to be bothered with 
them. And of course patients, even when they 
are anxious to go anywhere on their own ac- 
count, much prefer to be sent there by their 
doctor. 

"My dear madam," Dr. Slyder would say 
to a lady who, as he knew, was most anxious to 
go to Virginia, "there's really nothing I can do 
for you." Here he spoke the truth. "It's not 
a case of treatment. It's simply a matter of 
dropping everything and going away. Now 
why don't you go for a month or two to some 
quiet place, where you will simply do nothing f 
(She never, as he knew, did anything, anyway.) 
"What do you say to Hot Springs, Virginia? — 
absolute quiet, good golf, not a soul there, 
plenty of tennis." Or else he would say, "My 
dear madam, you're simply worn out. Why 
don't you just drop everything and go to Can- 
ada? — perfectly quiet, not a soul there, and, I 
believe, nowadays quite fashionable." 

Thus, after all the patients had been sent 
away. Dr. Slyder and his colleagues of Plu- 
toria Avenue managed to slip away themselves 
167 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

for a month or two, heading straight for Paris 
and Vienna. There they were able, so they 
said, to keep in touch with what continental 
doctors were doing. They probably were. 

Now it so happened that both the parents of 
Miss Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown had been 
sent out of town in this fashion. Mrs. Rassel- 
yer-Brown's distressing experience with Yahi- 
Bahi had left her in a condition in which she 
was utterly fit for nothing, except to go on a 
Mediterranean cruise, with about eighty other 
people also fit for nothing. 

Mr. Rasselyer-Brown himself, though never 
exactly an invalid, had confessed that after all 
the fuss of the Yahi-Bahi business he needed 
bracing up, needed putting into shape, and had 
put himself into Dr. Slyder's hands. The doc- 
tor had examined him, questioned him search- 
ingly as to what he drank, and ended by pre- 
scribing port wine to be taken firmly and 
unflinchingly during the evening, and for the 
daytime, at any moment of exhaustion, a light 
cordial such as rye whiskey, or rum and Vichy 
water. In addition to which Dr. Slyder had 
recommended Mr. Rasselyer-Brown to leave 
town. 

"Why don't you go down to Nagahakett on 
the Atlantic?" he said. 

"Is that in Maine?" said Mr. Rasselyer- 
Brown in horror. 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"Oh, dear me, no !" answered the doctor 
reassuringly. "It's in New Brunswick, Can- 
ada; excellent place, most liberal license laws; 
first class cuisine and bar In the hotel. No 
tourists, no golf, too cold to swim — just the 
place to enjoy oneself." 

So Mr. Rasselyer-Brown had gone away also, 
and as a result Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown, at 
the particular moment of which we speak, was 
declared by the Boudoir and Society column of 
the Plutorian Daily Dollar to be staying with 
Mr. and Mrs. Newberry at their charming re- 
treat, Castel Casteggio. 

The Newberrys belonged to the class of peo- 
ple whose one aim in the summer is to lead the 
simple life. Mr. Newberry himself said that 
his one idea of a vacation was to get right out 
into the bush, and put on old clothes, and just 
eat when he felt like it. 

This was why he had built Castel Casteggio. 
It stood about forty miles from the city, out 
among the wooded hills on the shore of a little 
lake. Except for the fifteen or twenty resi- 
dences like it that dotted the sides of the lake, 
it was entirely isolated. The only way to reach 
it was by the motor road that wound its way 
among leafy hills from the railway station fif- 
teen miles away. Every foot of the road was 
private property, as all nature ought to be. 
The whole country about Castel Casteggio was 
169 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

absolutely primeval, or at any rate as primeval 
as Scotch gardeners and French landscape art- 
ists could make it. The lake itself lay like a 
sparkling gem from nature's workshop — ex- 
cept that they had raised the level of it ten feet, 
stone-banked the sides, cleared out the brush, 
and put a motor road round it. Beyond that 
it was pure nature. 

Castel Casteggio itself, a beautiful house of 
white brick with sweeping piazzas and glitter- 
ing conservatories, standing among great trees 
with rolling lawns broken with flower-beds as 
the ground sloped to the lake, was perhaps the 
most beautiful house of all; at any rate, it was 
an ideal spot to wear old clothes in, to dine 
early (at 7.30) and, except for tennis parties, 
motor boat parties, lawn teas, and golf, to live 
absolutely to oneself. 

It should be explained that the house was not 
called Castel Casteggio because the Newberrys 
were Italian: they were not; nor because they 
owned estates in Italy: they didn't; nor had 
travelled there: they hadn't. Indeed, for a 
time they had thought of giving it a Welsh 
name, or a Scotch. But the beautiful country 
residence of the Asterisk-Thomsons that stood 
close by in the same primeval country was al- 
ready called Pennygw-rydd, and the woodland 
retreat of the Hyphen-Joneses just across the 
little lake was called Strathythan-na-Clee, and 
170 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

the charming chalet of the Wilson-Smiths was 
called Yodel-Dudel; so It seemed fairer to select 
an Italian name. 

"By Jove ! Miss Furlong, how awfully good 
of you to come down!" 

The little suburban train — two cars only, 
both first class, for the train went nowhere ex- 
cept out into the primeval wilderness — had 
drawn up at the diminutive roadside station. 
Mr. Spillikins had alighted, and there was Miss 
Phllippa Furlong sitting behind the chauffeur 
in the Newberrys' motor. She was looking as 
beautiful as only the younger sister of a High 
Church episcopalian rector can look, dressed 
in white, the colour of saintliness, on a beauti- 
ful morning in July. 

There was no doubt about Phllippa Furlong. 
Her beauty was of that peculiar and almost 
sacred kind found only in the immediate neigh- 
bourhood of the High Church clergy. It was 
admitted by all who envied or admired her that 
she could enter a church more gracefully, move 
more swimmingly up the aisle, and pray better 
than any girl on Plutoria Avenue. 

Mr. Spillikins, as he gazed at her in her white 

summer dress and wide picture hat, with her 

parasol nodding above her head, reahsed that 

after all, rehglon, as embodied In the younger 

171 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

sisters of the High Church clergy, fills a great 
place in the world. 

"By Jove!" he repeated, "how awfully good 
of youl" 

"Not a bit," said Philippa. "Hop in. Dul- 
phemia was coming, but she couldn't. Is that 
all you have with you?" 

The last remark was ironical. It referred to 
the two quite large steamer trunks of Mr. Spilli- 
kins that were being loaded, together with his 
suit-case, tennis racket, and golf kit, on to the 
fore part of the motor. Mr. Spillikins, as a 
young man of social experience, had roughed it 
before. He knew what a lot of clothes one 
needs for it. 

So the motor sped away, and went bowling 
noiselessly over the oiled road, and turning 
corners where the green boughs of the great 
trees almost swished in their faces, and round- 
ing and twisting among curves of the hills as it 
carried Spillikins and Philippa away from the 
lower domain or ordinary fields and farms up 
into the enchanted country of private property 
and the magic castles of Casteggio and Penny- 
gw-rydd. 

Mr. Spillikins must have assured Philippa at 
least a dozen times in starting off how awfully 
good it was of her to come down in the motor; 
and he was so pleased at her coming to meet him 
that Philippa never even hinted that the truth 
172 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

was that she had expected somebody else on the 
same train. For to a girl brought up in the 
principles of the High Church the truth is a 
very sacred thing. She keeps it to herself. 

And naturally, with such a sympathetic lis- 
tener, it was not long before Mr. Spillikins had 
begun to talk of Dulphemia and his hopes. 

"I don't know whether she really cares for 
me or not," said Mr. Spillikins, "but I have 
pretty good hope. The other day, or at least 
about two months ago, at one of the Yahi- 
Bahi meetings — you were not in that, were 
you?" he said, breaking off. 

"Only just at the beginning," said Philippa; 
"we went to Bermuda." 

"Oh yes, I remember. Do you know, I 
thought it pretty rough at the end, especially 
on Ram Spudd. I liked him. I sent him two 
pounds of tobacco to the penitentiary last week; 
you can get it in to them, you know, if you know 
how." 

"But what were you going to say?" asked 
Philippa. 

"Oh yes," said Mr. Spillikins. And he re- 
alised that he had actually drifted off the topic 
of Dulphemia, a thing that had never happened 
to him before. "I was going to say that at one 
of the meetings, you know, I asked her if I 
might call her Dulphemia." 
173 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"And what did she say to that?" asked 
Philippa. 

"She said she didn't care what I called her. 
So I think that looks pretty good, don't you?" 

"Awfully good," said Philippa. 

"And a little after that I took her slippers 
home from the Charity Ball at the Grand Pala- 
ver. Archie Jones took her home herself in 
his car, but I took her slippers. She'd forgot- 
ten them. I thought that a pretty good sign, 
wasn't it? You wouldn't let a chap carry round 
your slippers unless you knew him pretty well, 
would you. Miss Philippa?" 

"Oh no, nobody would," said Philippa. This, 
of course, was a standing principle of the Angli- 
can Church. 

"And a little after that Dulphemia and 
Charlie Mostyn and I were walking to Mrs. 
Buncomhearst's musical, and we'd only just 
started along the street, when she stopped and 
sent me back for her music — me, mind you, not 
Charlie. That seems to me awfully significant." 

"It seems to speak volumes," said Philippa. 
"Doesn't it?" said Mr. SpiUikins. "You 
don't mind my telling you all about this, Miss 
Philippa?" he added. 

Incidentally Mr. Spillikins felt that it was all 

right to call her Miss Philippa, because she had 

a sister who was really Miss Furlong, so it 

would have been quite wrong, as Mr. Spilli- 

174 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

kins realised, to have called Miss Philippa by 
her surname. In any case, the beauty of the 
morning was against it. 

"I don't mind a bit," said Philippa. "I think 
it's awfully nice of you to tell me about it." 

She didn't add that she knew all about it 
already. 

"You see," said Mr. Spillikins, "you're so 
awfully sympathetic. It makes it so easy to talk 
to you. With other girls, especially with clever 
ones, even with Dulphemia, I often feel a per- 
fect jackass beside them. But I don't feel that 
way with you at all." 

"Don't you really?" said Philippa, but the 
honest admiration in Mr. SpiUikins's protruding 
blue eyes forbade a sarcastic answer. 

"By Jove!" said Mr. SpiUikins presently, 
with complete irrelevance, "I hope you don't 
mind my saying it, but you look awfully well in 
white — stunning." He felt that a man who was 
affianced, or practically so, was allowed the 
smaller liberty of paying honest compliments. 

"Oh, this old thing," laughed Philippa, with 
a contemptuous shake of her dress. "But up 
here, you know, we just wear anything." She 
didn't say that this old thing was only two 
weeks old and had cost eighty dollars, or the 
equivalent of one person's pew rent at St. 
Asaph's for six months. 

And after that they had only time, so It 
175 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

seemed to Mr. Spillikins, for two or three re- 
marks, and he had scarcely had leisure to re- 
flect what a charming girl Philippa had grown 
to be since she went to Bermuda — the effect, no 
doubt, of the climate of those fortunate islands 
— when quite suddenly they rounded a curve 
into an avenue of nodding trees, and there were 
the great lawn and wide piazzas and the con- 
servatories of Castel Casteggio right in front 
of them. 

"Here we are," said Philippa, "and there's 
Mr. Newberry out on the lawn." 

"Now, here," Mr. Newberry was saying a 
little later, waving his hand, "is where you get 
what I think the finest view of the place." 

He was standing at the corner of the lawn 
where it sloped, dotted with great trees, to the 
banks of the little lake, and was showing Mr. 
Spillikins the beauties of Castel Casteggio. 

Mr. Newberry wore on his short circular 
person the summer costume of a man taking 
his ease and careless of dress: plain white flan- 
nel trousers, not worth more than six dollars a 
leg, an ordinary white silk shirt with a rolled 
collar, that couldn't have cost more than fifteen 
dollars, and on his head an ordinary Panama 
hat, say forty dollars. 

"By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins, as he looked 
176 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

about him at the house and the beautiful lawn 
with its great trees, "it's a lovely place." 

"Isn't It?" said Mr. Newberry. "But you 
ought to have seen It when I took hold of it. 
To make the motor road alone I had to dyna- 
mite out about a hundred yards of rock, and 
then I fetched up cement, tons and tons of It, 
and boulders to buttress the embankment." 

"Did you really!" said Mr. Spillikins, look- 
ing at Mr. Newberry with great respect. 

"Yes, and even that was nothing to the house 
itself. Do you know, I had to go at least forty 
feet for the foundations. First I went through 
about twenty feet of loose clay, after that I 
struck sand, and I'd no sooner got through that 
than, by George! I landed in eight feet of 
water. I had to pump it out; I think I took out 
a thousand gallons before I got clear down to 
the rock. Then I took my solid steel beams in 
fifty-foot lengths," here Mr. Newberry Imi- 
tated with his arms the action of a man setting 
up a steel beam, "and set them upright and 
bolted them on the rock. After that I threw my 
steel girders across, clapped on my roof rafters, 
all steel, in sixty-foot pieces, and then just held 
it easily, just supported it a bit, and let it sink 
gradually to Its place." 

Mr. Newberry illustrated with his two arms 
the action of a huge house being allowed to sink 
slowly to a firm rest. 

177 



Arcadian Adventures tcith the Idle Rich 

"You don't say so I" said Mr. Spillikins, lost 
in amazement at the wonderful physical 
strength that Mr. Newberry must have. 

"Excuse me just a minute," broke off Mr. 
Newberry, "while I smooth out the gravel 
where you're standing. You've rather dis- 
turbed it, I'm afraid." 

"Oh, I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Spillikins. 

"Oh, not at all, not at all," said his host. "I 
don't mind in the least. It's only on account of 
McAllster:" 

"Who?" asked Mr. Spillikins. 

"My gardener. He doesn't care to have us 
walk on the gravel paths. It scuffs up the 
gravel so. But sometimes one forgets." 

It should be said here, for the sake of clear- 
ness, that one of the chief glories of Castel 
Casteggio lay in its servants. All of them, it 
goes without saying, had been brought from 
Great Britain. The comfort they gave to Mr. 
and Mrs. Newberry was unspeakable. In fact, 
as they themselves admitted, servants of the 
kind are simply not to be found in America. 

"Our Scotch gardener," Mrs. Newberry al- 
ways explained, "is a perfect character. I don't 
know how we could get another like him. Do 
you know, my dear, he simply won't allow us 
to pick the roses; and if any of us walk across 
the grass he is furious. And he positively re- 
fuses to let us use the vegetables. He told me 
178 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

quite plainly that if we took any of his young 
peas or his early cucumbers he would leave. 
We are to have them later on when he's finished 
growing them." 

"How delightful it is to have servants of that 
sort," the lady addressed would murmur; "so 
devoted and so different from servants on this 
side of the water. Just imagine, my dear, my 
chauffeur, when I was in Colorado, actually 
threatened to leave me merely because I wanted 
to reduce his wages. I think it's these wretched 
labour unions." 

"I'm sure it is. Of course we have trouble 
with McAlister at times, but he's always very 
reasonable when we put things in the right light. 
Last week, for example, I was afraid that we 
had gone too far with him. He is always ac- 
customed to have a quart of beer every morn- 
ing at half-past ten — the maids are told to 
bring It out to him, and after that he goes to 
sleep in the little arbour beside the tulip bed. 
And the other day when he went there he 
found that one of our guests who hadn't been 
told, was actually sitting in there reading. Of 
course he was furious. I was afraid for the 
moment that he would give notice on the spot." 

"What would you have done?" 

"Positively, my dear, I don't know. But we 
explained to him at once that It was only an 
accident and that the person hadn't known and 
179 



Arcadian Adventures tvith the Idle Rich 

that of course It wouldn't occur again. After 
that he was softened a little, but he went off 
muttering to himself, and that evening he dug 
up all the new tulips and threw them over the 
fence. We saw him do It, but we didn't dare 
say anything." 

"Oh no," echoed the other lady; "If you had 
you might have lost him." 

"Exactly. And I don't think we could pos- 
sibly get another man like him; at least, not on 
this side of the water." 

"But come," said Mr. Newberry, after he 
had finished adjusting the gravel with his foot, 
"there are Mrs. Newberry and the girls on the 
verandah. Let's go and join them." 

A few minutes later Mr. Spillikins was talk- 
ing with Mrs. Newberry and Dulphemla Ras- 
selyer-Brown, and telling Mrs. Newberry what 
a beautiful house she had. Beside them stood 
Philippa Furlong, and she had her arm around 
Dulphemia's waist; and the picture that they 
thus made, with their heads close together, 
Dulphemia's hair being golden and Phillppa's 
chestnut-brown, was such that Mr. Spillikins 
had no eyes for Mrs. Newberry nor for Castel 
Casteggio nor for anything. So much so that 
he practically didn't see at all the little girl in 
green that stood unobtrusively on the further 
side of Mrs. Newberry. Indeed, though some- 
i8o 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

body had murmured her name in Introduction, 
he couldn't have repeated It If asked two min- 
utes afterwards. His eyes and his mind were 
elsewhere. 

But hers were not. 

For the Little Girl in Green looked at Mr. 
Spillikins with wide eyes, and when she looked 
at him she saw all at once such wonderful 
things about him as nobody had ever seen be- 
fore. 

For she could see from the poise of his head 
how awfully clever he was; and from the way 
he stood with his hands in his side pockets she 
could see how manly and brave he must be; and 
of course there was firmness and strength writ- 
ten all over him. In short, she saw as she 
looked such a Peter Spillikins as truly never 
existed, or could exist — or at least such a Peter 
Spillikins as no one else in the world had ever 
suspected before. 

AH In a moment she was ever so glad that 
she accepted Mrs. Newberry's invitation to 
Castel Castegglo and hadn't been afraid to 
come. For the Little Girl in Green, whose 
Christian name was Norah, was only what is 
called a poor relation of Mrs. Newberry, and 
her father was a person of no account what- 
ever, who didn't belong to the Mausoleum Club 
or to any other club, and who lived, with Norah, 
on a street that nobody who was anybody lived 
i8i 



Arcadian Adventures 'with the Idle liich 

upon. Norah had been asked up a few days 
before out of the City to give her air — which 
is the only thing that can be safely and freely 
given to poor relations. Thus she had arrived 
at Castel Casteggio with one diminutive trunk, 
so small and shabby that even the servants who 
carried it upstairs were ashamed of it. In it 
were a pair of brand new tennis shoes (at 
ninety cents reduced to seventy-five, and a white 
dress of the kind that is called "almost even- 
ing," and such few other things as poor rela- 
tions might bring with fear and trembling to 
join in the simple rusticity of the rich. 

Thus stood Norah looking at Mr. Spillikins. 

As for him, such is the contrariety of human 
things, he had no eyes for her at all. 

"What a perfectly charming house this Is," 
Mr. Spillikins was saying. He always said 
this on such occasions, but it seemed to the 
Little Girl In Green that he spoke with wonder- 
ful social ease. 

"I am so glad you think so," said Mrs. New- 
berry (this was what she always answered) ; 
"you've no Idea what work it has been. This 
year we put in all this new glass in the east con- 
servatory, over a thousand panes. Such a tre- 
mendous business!" 

"I was just telling Mr. Spillikins," said Mr. 
Newberry, "about the work we had blasting 
out the motor road. You can see the gap where 
182 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

it lies better from here, I think, Spillikins. I 
must have exploded a ton and a half of dyna- 
mite on it." 

"By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins; "It must be 
dangerous work, eh? I wonder you aren't 
afraid of It." 

"One simply gets used to It, that's all," said 
Newberry, shrugging his shoulders; "but of 
course It is dangerous. I blew up two Italians 
on the last job." He paused a minute and 
added musingly, "Hardy fellows, the Italians. 
I prefer them to any other people for blasting.'^ 

"Did you blow them up yourself?" asked 
Mr. Spillikins. 

"I wasn't here," answered Mr. Newberry. 
"In fact, I never care to be here when I'm blast- 
ing. We go to town. But I had to foot the 
bill for them all the same. Quite right, too. 
The risk, of course, was mine, not theirs; that's 
the law, you know. They cost me two thou- 
sand each." 

"But come," said Mrs. Newberry, "I think 
we must go and dress for dinner. Franklin 
will be frightfully put out if we're late. Frank- 
lin is our butler," she went on, seeing that Mr. 
Spillikins didn't understand the reference, "and 
as we brought him out from England we have 
to be rather careful. With a good man like 
Franklin one is always so afraid of losing him 
183 



Arcadian Adve7itures with the Idle Rich 

— and after last night we have to be doubly 
careful." 

"Why last night?" asked Mr. Spillikins. 

"Oh, it wasn't much," said Mrs. Newberry. 
"In fact, it was merely an accident. Only it 
just chanced that at dinner, quite late in the 
meal, when we had had nearly everything (we 
dine very simply here, Mr. Spillikins), Mr. 
Newberry, who was thirsty and who wasn't 
really thinking what he was saying, asked 
Franklin to give him a glass of hock. Franklin 
said at once, Tm very sorry, sir, I don't care to 
serve my hock after the entree!" 

"And of course he was right," said Dul- 
phemia with emphasis. 

"Exactly; he was perfectly right. They 
know, you know. We were afraid that there 
might be trouble, but Mr. Newberry went and 
saw Franklin afterwards and he behaved very 
well over it. But suppose we go and dress? 
It's half-past six already and we've only an 
hour." 

In this congenial company Mr. Spillikins 
spent the next three days. 

Life at Castel Casteggio, as the Newberrys 
loved to explain, was conducted on the very 
simplest plan. Early breakfast, country fash- 
ion, at nine o'clock; after that nothing to eat 
till lunch, unless one cared to have lemonade 
184 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

or bottled ale sent out with a biscuit or a mac- 
aroon to the tennis court. Lunch" Itself was a 
perfectly plain midday meal, lasting till about 
1.30, and consisting simply of cold meats (say 
four kinds) and salads, with perhaps a made 
dish or two, and, for anybody who cared for 
it, a hot steak or a chop, or both. After that 
one had coffee and cigarettes In the shade of 
the piazza and waited for afternoon tea. This 
latter was served at a wicker table In any part 
of the grounds that the gardener was not at that 
moment clipping, trimming, or otherwise using. 
Afternoon tea being over, one rested or walked 
on the lawn till It was time to dress for dinner. 

This simple routine was broken only by ir- 
ruptions of people In motors or motor boats 
from Penny-gw-rydd or Yodel-Dudel Chalet. 

The whole thing, from the point of view of 
Mr. Spillikins or Dulphemla or Phllippa, repre- 
sented rusticity Itself. 

To the Little Girl in Green it seemed as bril- 
liant as the Court of Versailles; especially even- 
ing dinner — a plain home meal as the others 
thought it — -when she had four glasses to drink 
out of and used to wonder over such problems 
as whether you were supposed, when Franklin 
poured out wine, to tell him to stop or to wait 
till he stopped without being told to stop; and 
other similar mysteries, such as many people 
before and after have meditated upon. 
185 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

During all this time Mr. Spillikins was nerv- 
ing himself to propose to Dulphemia Rassel- 
yer-Brown. In fact, he spent part of his time 
walking up and down under the trees with 
Philippa Furlong and discussing with her the 
proposal that he meant to make, together with 
such topics as marriage in general and his own 
unworthiness. 

He might have waited indefinitely had he not 
learned, on the third day of his visit, that Dul- 
phemia was to go away in the morning to join 
her father at Nagahakett. 

That evening he found the necessary nerve to 
speak, and the proposal in almost every aspect 
of it was most successful. 

"By Jove!" Spillikins said to Philippa Fur- 
long next morning, in explaining what had hap- 
pened, "she was awfully nice about it. I think 
she must have guessed, in a way, don't you, 
what I was going to say? But at any rate she 
was awfully nice — let me say everything I 
wanted, and when I explained what a fool I 
was, she said she didn't think I was half such 
a fool as people thought me. But it's all right. 
It turns out that she isn't thinking of getting 
married. I asked her if I might always go on 
thinking of her, and she said I might." 

And that morning when Dulphemia was car- 
ried off in the motor to the station, Mr. Spilli- 
kins, without exactly being aware how he had 
i86 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

done it, had somehow transferred himself to 
Philippa. 

"Isn't she a splendid girl!" he said at least 
itn times a day to Norah, the Little Girl in 
Green. And Norah always agreed, because 
she really thought Philippa a perfectly wonder- 
ful creature. 

There is no doubt that, but for a slight shift 
of circumstances, Mr. Spillikins would have 
proposed to Miss Furlong. Indeed, he spent 
a good part of his time rehearsing little speeches 
that began, "Of course I know I'm an awful ass 
in a way," or, "Of course I know that I'm not 
at all the sort of fellow," and so on. 

But not one of them ever was delivered. 

For it so happened that on the Thursday, one 
week after Mr. Spillikins's arrival, Philippa 
went again to the station in the motor. And 
when she came back there was another pas- 
senger with her, a tall young man in tweed, 
and they both began calling out to the New- 
berrys from a distance of at least a hundred 
yards. 

And both the Newberrys suddenly exclaimed, 
"Why, it's Tom!" and rushed off to meet the 
motor. And there was such a laughing and 
jubilation as the two descended and carried 
Tom's valises to the verandah, that Mr. Spilli- 
kins felt as suddenly and completely out of it 
as the Little Girl In Green herself — especially 
187 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 



as his ear had caught, among the first things 
said, the words, "Congratulate us, Mrs. New- 
berry, we're engaged." 

After which Mr. Spillikins had the pleasure 
of sitting and listening while it was explained, 
in wicker chairs on the verandah, that Philippa 
and Tom had been engaged already for ever so 
long — in fact, nearly two weeks, only they had 
agreed not to say a word to anybody till Tom 
had gone to North Carolina and back, to see 
his people. 

And as to who Tom was, or what was the 
relation between Tom and the Newberrys, Mr. 
Spillikins neither knew nor cared; nor did it 
interest him in the least that Philippa had met 
Tom in Bermuda, and that she hadn't known 
that he even knew the Newberrys, nor any 
other of the exuberant disclosures of the mo- 
ment. In fact, if there was any one period 
rather than another when Mr. Spillikins felt 
corroborated in his private view of himself, 
It was at this moment. 

So the next day Tom and Philippa vanished 
together. 

"We shall be quite a small party now," said 
Mrs. Newberry; "in fact, quite by ourselves 
till Mrs. Everleigh comes, and she won't be 
here for a fortnight." 

At which the heart of the Little Girl in 
Green was glad, because she had been afraid 
i88 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

that other girls might be coming, whereas she 
knew that Mrs. Everleigh was a widow with 
four sons and must be ever so old, past forty. 

The next few days were spent by Mr. Spilli- 
kins almost entirely in the society of Norah. 
He thought them on the whole rather pleasant 
days, but slow. To her they were an uninter- 
rupted dream of happiness never to be forgot- 
ten. 

The Newberrys left them to themselves; not 
with any intent; it was merely that they were 
perpetually busy walking about the grounds of 
Castel Casteggio, blowing up things with dyna- 
mite, throwing steel bridges over gullies, and 
hoisting heavy timber with derricks. Nor were 
they to blame for it. For it had not always 
been theirs to command dynamite and control 
the forces of nature. There had been a time, 
now long ago, when the two Newberrys had 
lived, both of them, on twenty dollars a week, 
and Mrs. Newberry had made her own dresses, 
and Mr. Newberry had spent vigorous evenings 
In making hand-made shelves for their sitting- 
room. That was long ago, and since then Mr. 
Newberry, like many other people of those 
earlier days, had risen to wealth and Castel 
Casteggio, while others, like Norah's father, 
had stayed just where they were. 

So the Newberrys left Peter and Norah to 
themselves all day. Even after dinner, in the 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

evening, Mr. Newberry was very apt to call to 
his wife in the dusk from some distant corner 
of the lawn : 

"Margaret, come over here and tell me if 
you don't think we might cut down this elm, 
tear the stump out by the roots, and throw it 
into the ravine." 

And the answer was, "One minute, Edward; 
just wait till I get a wrap." 

Before they came back the dusk had grown 
to darkness, and they had redynamited half the 
estate. 

During all of which time Mr. Spillikins sat 
with Norah on the piazza. He talked and she 
listened. He told her, for instance, all about 
his terrific experiences in the oil business, and 
about his exciting career at college; or pres- 
ently they went indoors and Norah played the 
piano and Mr. Spillikins sat and smoked and 
listened. In such a house as the Newberrys', 
where dynamite and the greater explosives were 
everyday matters, a little thing lilce the use of 
tobacco in the drawing-room didn't count. As 
for the music, "Go right ahead," said Mr. 
Spillikins; "I'm not musical, but I don't mind 
music a bit." 

In the daytime they played tennis. There 

was a court at one end of the lawn beneath the 

trees, all chequered with sunlight and mingled 

shadow; very beautiful, Norah thought, though 

190 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Mr. Spillikins explained that the spotted light 
put him off his game. In fact, It was owing 
entirely to this bad light that Mr. Spilliklns's 
fast drives, wonderful though they were, some- 
how never got Inside the service court. 

Norah, of course, thought Mr. Spillikins a 
wonderful player. She was glad — In fact, it 
suited them both — when he beat her six to 
nothing. She didn't know and didn't care that 
there was no one else in the world that Mr. 
Spillikins could beat like that. Once he even 
said to her, 

"By Gad! you don't play half a bad game, 
you know. I think, you know, with practice 
you'd come on quite a lot." 

After that the games were understood to be 
more or less In the form of lessons, which put 
Mr. Spillikins on a pedestal of superiority, and 
allowed any bad strokes on his part to be viewed 
as a form of indulgence. 

Also, as the tennis was viewed in this light, 
it was Norah's part to pick up the balls at the 
net and throw them back to Mr. Spillikins. He 
let her do this, not from rudeness, for it wasn't 
in him, but because In such a primeval place as 
Castel Castegglo the natural primitive relation 
of the sexes is bound to reassert itself. 

But of love Mr. Spillikins never thought. 
He had viewed it so eagerly and so often from 
a distance that when it stood here modestly at 
191 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

his very elbow he did not recognise Its presence. 
His mind had been fashioned, as It were, to 
connect love with something stunning and sen- 
sational, with Easter hats and harem skirts and 
the luxurious consciousness of the unattainable. 

Even at that, there Is no knowing what might 
have happened. Tennis, In the chequered light 
of sun and shadow cast by summer leaves. Is a 
dangerous game. There came a day when they 
were standing one each side of the net and Mr. 
Spillikins was explaining to Norah the proper 
way to hold a racquet so as to be able to give 
those miagnificent backhand sweeps of his, by 
which he generally drove the ball half-way to 
the lake; and explaining this Involved putting 
his hand right over Norah's on the handle of 
the racquet, so that for just half a second her 
hand was clasped tight in his; and If that half- 
second had been lengthened out Into a whole 
second It Is quite possible that what was already 
subconscious in his mind would have broken Its 
way triumphantly to the surface, and Norah's 
hand would have stayed In his — how willing- 
ly — ! for the rest of their two lives. 

But just at that moment Mr. SpIHIklns looked 
up, and he said in quite an altered tone, 

"By Jove! who's that awfully good-looking 
woman getting out of the motor?" 

And their hands unclasped. Norah looked 
over towards the house and said, 
192 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"Why, It's Mrs. Everleigh. I thought she 
wasn't coming for another week." 

*'I say," said Mr. Spillikins, straining his 
short sight to the uttermost, "what perfectly 
wonderful golden hair, eh?" 

"Why, it's " Norah began, and then she 

stopped. It didn't seem right to explain that 
Mrs. Everleigh's hair was dyed. 

"And who's that tall chap standing beside 
her?" said Mr. Spillikins. 

"I think it's Captain Cormorant, but I don't 
think he's going to stay. He's only brought 
her up in the motor from town." 

"By Jove, how good of him!" said Spilli- 
kins; and this sentiment in regard to Captain 
Cormorant, though he didn't know it, was to 
become a keynote of his existence. 

"I didn't know she was coming so soon," 
said Norah, and there was weariness already in 
her heart. Certainly she didn't know it; still 
less did she know, or anyone else, that the rea- 
son of Mrs. Everleigh's coming was because 
Mr. Spillikins was there. She came with a 
set purpose, and she sent Captain Cormorant 
directly back in the motor because she didn't 
want him on the premises. 

"Oughtn't we to go up to the house?" said 
Norah. 

"All right," said Mr. SpiUikins with great 
alacrity, "let's go." 

193 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Now as this story began with the informa- 
tion that Mrs. Everleigh is at present Mrs. 
Everleigh-SpIUikins, there is no need to pur- 
sue in detail the stages of Mr. Spillikins's woo- 
ing. Its course was swift and happy. Mr. 
SpiUikins, having seen the back of Mrs. Ever- 
leigh's head, had decided instanter that she was 
the most beautiful woman in the world; and 
that impression is not easily corrected in the 
half-light of a shaded drawing-room; nor 
across a dinner-table lighted only with candles 
with deep red shades; nor even in the daytime 
through a veil. In any case, it is only fair to 
state that if Mrs. Everleigh was not and is not 
a singularly beautiful woman, Mr. Spillikins 
still doesn't know it. And in point of attrac- 
tion the homage of such experts as Captain Cor- 
morant and Lieutenant Hawk speaks for itself. 

So the course of Mr. Spillikins's love, for 
love it must have been, ran swiftly to its goal. 
Each stage of it was duly marked by his com- 
ments to Norah. 

"She is 2i splendid woman," he said, "so 
sympathetic. She always seems to know just 
what one's going to say." 

So she did, for she was making him say it. 

"By Jove!" he said a day later, "Mrs. 

Everleigh's an awfully ifine woman, isn't she? 

I was telling her about my having been in the 

oil business for a little while, and she thinks 

194 



Arcadian Adve7itures with the Idle Rich 

that I'd really be awfully good in money things. 
She said she wished she had me to manage her 
money for her." 

This also was quite true, except that Mrs. 
Everleigh had not made it quite clear that the 
management of her money was of the form gen- 
erally known as deficit financing. In fact, her 
money was, very crudely stated, non-existent, 
and it needed a lot of management. 

A day or two later Mr. Spillikins was say- 
ing, *'I think Mrs. Everleigh must have had 
great sorrow, don't you? Yesterday she was 
showing me a photograph of her little boy — 
she has a little boy, you know " 

"Yes, I know," said Norah. She didn't add 
that she knew that Mrs. Everleigh had four. 

" — and she was saying how awfully rough 
it is having to have him always away from 
her at Dr. Something's academy where he is." 

And very soon after that Mr. Spillikins was 
saying, with quite a quaver in his voice, 

"By Jove! yes, I'm awfully lucky; I never 
thought for a moment that she'd have me, you 
know — a woman like her, with so much atten- 
tion and everything. I can't imagine what she 
sees in me." 

Which was just as well. 

And then Mr. Spillikins checked himself, for 
he noticed — this was on the verandah in the 
morning — that Norah had a hat and jacket on 
195 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

and that the motor was rolling towards the 
door. 

"I say," he said, "are you going away?" 

"Yes, didn't you know?" Norah said. "I 
thought you heard them speaking of it at dinner 
last night. I have to go home; father's alone, 
you know." 

"Oh, I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Spilli- 
kins; "we shan't have any more tennis." 

"Good-bye," said Norah, and as she said it 
and put out her hand there were tears brimming 
up into her eyes. But Mr. Spillikins, being 
short of sight, didn't see them. 

"Good-bye," he said. 

Then as the motor carried her away he stood 
for a moment in a sort of reverie. Perhaps 
certain things that might have been rose un- 
formed and inarticulate before his mind. And 
then a voice called from the drawing-room 
within, in a measured and assured tone, 

"Peter, darling, where are you?" 

"Coming," cried Mr. Spillikins, and he came. 

On the second day of the engagement Mrs. 
Everleigh showed to Peter a little photograph 
in a brooch. 

"This is Gib, my second little boy," she 
said. 

Mr. Spillikins started to say, "I didn't 

know " and then checked himself and said, 

196 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"By Gad! what a fine-looking little chap, eh? 
I'm awfully fond of boys." 

"Dear little fellow, isn't he?" said Mrs. 
Everlelgh. "He's really rather taller than 
that now, because this picture was taken a little 
while ago." 

And the next day she said, "This is Willie, 
my third boy," and on the day after that she 
said, "This is Sib, my youngest boy; I'm sure 
you'll love him." 

"I'm sure I shall," said Mr. Spillikins. He 
loved him already for being the youngest. 

And so in the fulness of time — nor was it 
so very full either, in fact, only about five 
weeks — Peter Spillikins and Mrs. Everleigh 
were married in St. Asaph's Church on Plutoria 
Avenue. And the wedding was one of the most 
beautiful and sumptuous of the weddings of 
the September season. There were flowers, and 
bridesmaids In long veils, and tall ushers in 
frock-coats, and awnings at the church door, 
and strings of motors with wedding-favours on 
imported chauffeurs, and all that goes to invest 
marriage on Plutoria Avenue with its peculiar 
sacredness. The face of the young rector, Mr. 
Fareforth Furlong, wore the added salntllness 
that springs from a five-hundred dollar fee. 
The whole town was there, or at least every- 
body that was anybody; and if there was one 
197 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

person absent, one who sat by herself In the 
darkened drawing-room of a dull little house 
on a shabby street, who knew or cared? 

So after the ceremony the happy couple — for 
were they not so? — left for New York. There 
they spent their honeymoon. They had thought 
of going, — it was Mr. Spilllkins's idea, — to the 
coast of Maine. But Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins 
said that New York was much nicer, so restful, 
whereas, as everyone knows, the coast of Maine 
Is frightfully noisy. 

Moreover, It so happened that before the 
Everleigh-Spillikinses had been more than four 
or five days in New York the ship of Captain 
Cormorant dropped anchor in the Hudson; 
and when the anchor of that ship was once 
down it generally stayed there. So the captain 
was able to take the Everleigh-Spillikinses about 
In New York, and to give a tea for Mrs. Ever- 
leigh-Spillikins on the deck of his vessel so that 
she might meet the officers, and another tea 
In a private room of a restaurant on Fifth Ave- 
nue so that she might meet no one but himself. 

And at this tea Captain Cormorant said, 
among other things, "Did he kick up rough 
at all when you told him about the money?" 

And Mrs. Everleigh, now Mrs. Everleigh- 
Spillikins, said, "Not hel I think he is actu- 
ally pleased to know that I haven't any. Do 
you know, Arthur, he's really an awfully good 
198 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

fellow," and as she said it she moved her hand 
away from under Captain Cormorant's on the 
tea-table. 

"I say," said the Captain, "don't get senti- 
mental over him." 

So that is how it is that the Everleigh-Spilli- 
kinses came to reside on Plutoria Avenue in a 
beautiful stone house, with the billiard-room in 
an extension on the second floor. Through the 
windows of it one can almost hear the click of 
the billiard balls, and a voice saying, " Hold on, 
father, you had your shot." 



199 



Chapter VI. — The Rival Churches of St. 
Asaph and St. Osoph 

THE church of St. Asaph, more prop- 
erly called St. Asaph's in the Fields, 
stands among the elm trees of Plu- 
toria Avenue opposite the university, 
its tall spire pointing to the blue sky. Its rector 
is fond of saying that it seems to him to point, 
as it were, a warning against the sins of a 
commercial age. More particularly does he 
say this in his Lenten services at noonday, when 
the business men sit in front of him in rows, 
their bald heads uncovered and their faces 
stamped with contrition as they think of mer- 
gers that they should have made, and real 
estate that they failed to buy for lack of faith. 
The ground on which St. Asaph's stands is 
worth seven dollars and a half a foot. The 
mortgagees, as they kneel in prayer in their 
long frock-coats, feel that they have built upon 
a rock. It is a beautifully appointed church. 
There are windows with priceless stained glass 
that were imported from Normandy, the rector 
himself swearing out the invoices to save the 
congregation the grievous burden of the cus- 
toms duty. There is a pipe organ in the tran- 
200 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

sept that cost ten thousand dollars to Instal. 
The debenture-holders, as they join in the morn- 
ing anthem, love to hear the dulcet notes of the 
great organ and to reflect that it is as good 
as new. Just behind the church is St. Asaph's 
Sunday School, with a ten-thousand dollar mort- 
gage of its own. And below that again, on the 
side street, is the building of the Young Men's 
Guild, with a bowling-alley and a swimming- 
bath deep enough to drown two young men at 
a time, and a billiard-room with seven tables. 
It is the rector's boast that with a Guild House 
such as that there is no need for any young 
man of the congregation to frequent a saloon. 
Nor is there. 

And on Sunday mornings, when the great 
organ plays, and the mortgagees and the bond- 
holders and the debenture-holders and the Sun- 
day school teachers and the billiard-markers 
all lift up their voices together, there is emitted 
from St. Asaph's a volume of praise that is 
practically as fine and effective as paid profes- 
sional work. 

St. Asaph's is episcopal. As a consequence 
it has In it and about It all those things which 
go to make up the episcopal church — brass tab- 
lets let into Its walls, blackbirds singing In its 
elm trees, parishioners who dine at eight o'clock, 
and a rector who wears a little crucifix and 
dances the tango. 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

On the other hand, there stands upon the 
same street, not a hundred yards away, the rival 
church of St. Osoph — presbyterian down to its 
very foundations in bed-rock, thirty feet below 
the level of the avenue. It has a short, squat 
tower — and a low roof, and its narrow windows 
are glazed with frosted glass. It has dark 
spruce trees instead of elms, crows instead of 
blackbirds, and a gloomy minister with a shovel 
hat who lectures on philosophy on week-days 
at the university. He loves to think that his 
congregation are made of the lowly and the 
meek in spirit, and to reflect that, lowly and 
meek as they are, there are men among them 
that could buy out half the congregation of 
St. Asaph's. 

St. Osoph's is only presbyterian In a special 
sense. It is, in fact, too presbyterian to be any 
longer connected with any other body whatso- 
ever. It seceded some forty years ago from 
the original body to which it belonged, and 
later on, with three other churches, it seceded 
from the group of seceding congregations. Still 
later it fell into a difference with the three other 
churches on the question of eternal punishment, 
the word "eternal" not appearing to the elders 
of St. Osoph's to designate a sufficiently long 
period. The dispute ended in a secession which 
left the church of St. Osoph practically isolated 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

in a world of sin whose approaching fate it 
neither denied nor deplored. 

In one respect the rival churches of Plutoria 
Avenue had had a similar history. Each of 
them had moved up by successive stages from 
the lower and poorer parts of the city. Forty 
years ago St. Asaph's had been nothing more 
than a little frame church with a tin spire, away 
in the west of the slums, and St. Osoph's a 
square, diminutive building away In the east. 
But 'the site of St. Asaph's had been bought 
by a brewing company, and the trustees, shrewd 
men of business, themselves rising Into wealth, 
had rebuilt It right In the track of the advanc- 
ing tide of a real estate boom. The elders of 
St. Osoph, quiet men, but Illumined by an Inner 
light, had followed suit and moved their church 
right against the side of an expanding dis- 
tillery. Thus both the churches, as decade fol- 
lowed decade, made their v/ay up the slope of 
the City till St. Asaph's was presently glori- 
ously expropriated by the street railway com- 
pany, and planted Its spire In triumph on Plu- 
toria Avenue Itself. But St. Osoph's followed. 
With each change of site It moved nearer and 
nearer to St. Asaph's. Its elders were shrewd 
men. With each move of their church they 
took careful thought In the rebuilding. In the 
manufacturing district it was built with sixteen 
windows on each side and was converted at a 
203 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

huge profit into a bicycle factory. On the resi- 
dential street it was made long and deep and 
was sold to a moving picture company without 
the alteration of so much as a pew. As a last 
step a syndicate, formed among the members 
of the congregation themselves, bought ground 
on Plutoria Avenue, and sublet it to themselves 
as a site for the church, at a nominal interest 
of five per cent, per annum, payable nominally 
every three months and secured by a nominal 
mortgage. 

As the two churches moved, their congrega- 
tions, or at least all that was best of them — 
such members as were sharing in the rising 
fortunes of the City — moved also, and now for 
some six or seven years the two churches and 
the two congregations had confronted one an- 
other among the elm trees of the Avenue oppo- 
site to the university. 

But at this point the fortunes of the churches 
had diverged. St. Asaph's was a brilliant suc- 
cess; St. Osoph's was a failure. Even its own 
trustees couldn't deny it. At a time when St. 
Asaph's was not only paying its interest but 
showing a handsome surplus on everything it 
undertook, the church of St. Osoph was moving 
steadily backwards. 

There was no doubt, of course, as to the 
cause. Everybody knew it. It was simply a 
question of men, and, as everybody said, one 
204 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

had only to compare the two men conducting 
the churches to see why one succeeded and the 
other failed. 

The Reverend Edward Fareforth Furlong of 
St. Asaph's was a man who threw his whole 
energy into his parish work. The subtleties of 
theological controversy he left to minds less 
active than his own. His creed was one of 
works rather than of words, and whatever he 
was doing he did it with his whole heart. 
Whether he was lunching at the Mausoleum 
Club with one of his churchwardens, or play- 
ing the flute, — which he played as only the epis- 
copal clergy can play it — accompanied on the 
harp by one of the fairest of the ladies of his 
choir, or whether he was dancing the new epis- 
copal tango with the younger daughters of the 
elder parishioners, he threw himself into it with 
all his might. He could drink tea more grace- 
fully and play tennis better than any clergy- 
man on this side of the Atlantic. He could 
stand beside the white stone font of St. Asaph's 
in his long white surplice holding a white-robed 
infant, worth half a million dollars, looking as 
beautifully innocent as the child itself, and 
drawing from every matron of the congrega- 
tion with unmarried daughters the despairing 
cry, " What a pity that he has no children of 
his own ! " 

Equally sound was his theology. No man 

205 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

was known to preach shorter sermons or to 
explain away the book of Genesis more agree- 
ably than the rector of St. Asaph's; and if he 
found it necessary to refer to the Deity he did 
so under the name of Jehovah or Jah, or even 
Yaweh, in a manner calculated not to hurt the 
sensitiveness of any of the parishioners. Peo- 
ple who would shudder at brutal talk of the 
older fashion about the wrath of God listened 
with well-bred interest to a sermon on the per- 
sonal characteristics of Jah. In the same Way 
Mr. Furlong always referred to the devil, not 
as Satan but as Su or Swa, which took all the 
sting out of him. Beelzebub he spoke of as 
Behel-Zawbab, which rendered him perfectly 
harmless. The Garden of Eden he spoke of 
as the Paradeisos, which explained it entirely; 
the flood as the Diluvium, which cleared it up 
completely; and Jonah he named, after the cor- 
rect fashion. Job Nah, which put the whole 
situation (his being swallowed by Baloo, or the 
Great Lizard) on a perfectly satisfactory foot- 
ing. Hell itself was spoken of as She-ol, and 
it appeared that it was not a place of burning, 
but rather of what one might describe as moral 
torment. This settled She-ol once and for all: 
nobody minds moral torment. In short, there 
was nothing in the theological system of Mr. 
Furlong that need have occasioned in any of 
his congregation a moment's discomfort. 
206 




Something in the quiet dignity of the young man held me. 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

There could be no greater contrast with Mr. 
Fareforth Furlong than the minister of St. 
Osoph's, the Rev. Dr. McTeague, who was also 
honorary professor of philosophy at the uni- 
versity. The one was young, the other was old; 
the one could dance, the other could not; the 
one moved about at church picnics and lawn 
teas among a bevy of disciples in pink and 
blue sashes; the other moped around under the 
trees of the university campus, with blinking 
eyes that saw nothing and an abstracted mind 
that had spent fifty years in trying to reconcile 
Hegel with St. Paul, and was still busy with it. 
Mr. Furlong went forward with the times; 
Dr. McTeague shd quietly backwards with the 
centuries. '"^ 

Dr. McTeague was a failure, and all his con- 
gregation knew it. "He is not up to date," 
they said. That was his crowning sin. "He 
don't go forward any," said the business mem- 
bers of the congregation. "That old man be- 
lieves just exactly the same sort of stuff now 
that he did forty years ago. What's more, he 
preaches it. You can't run a church that way, 
can you? " 

His trustees had done their best to meet the 
difficulty. They had offered Dr. McTeague a 
two-years' vacation to go and see the Holy 
Land. He refused; he said he could picture 
it. They reduced his salary by fifty per cent. ; 
207 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

he never noticed it. They offered him an as- 
sistant; but he shook his head, saying that he 
didn't know where he could find a man to do 
just the work that he was doing. Meantime he 
mooned about among the trees concocting a 
mixture of St. Paul with Hegel, three parts 
to one, for his Sunday sermon, and one part 
to three for his Monday lecture. 

No doubt it was his dual function that was 
to blame for his failure. And this, perhaps, 
was the fault of Dr. Boomer, the president of 
the university. Dr. Boomer, like all university 
presidents of to-day, belonged to the presb}^- 
terian church; or rather, to state it more cor- 
rectly, he included presbyterianism within him- 
self. He was, of course, a member of the board 
of management of St. Osoph's, and it was he 
who had urged, very strongly, the appoint- 
ment of Dr. McTeague, then senior professor 
of philosophy, as minister. 

"A saintly man," he said, "the very man 
for the post. If you should ask me whether 
he is entirely at home as a professor of philoso- 
phy on our staff at the university, I should be 
compelled to say no. We are forced to admit 
that as a lecturer he does not meet our views. 
He appears to find it difl^cult to keep religion 
out of his teaching. In fact, his lectures are 
suffused with a rather dangerous attempt at 
moral teaching which is apt to contaminate our 
208 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

students. But in the Church I should imagine 
that would be, if anything, an advantage. In- 
deed, if you were to come to me and say, 
'Boomer, we wish to appoint Dr. McTeague 
as our minister,' I should say, quite frankly. 
Take him.' " 

So Dr. McTeague had been appointed. 
Then, to the surprise of everybody, he refused 
to give up his lectures in philosophy. He said 
he felt a call to give them. The salary, he said, 
was of no consequence. He wrote to Mr. Fur- 
long senior (the father of the episcopal rector, 
and honorary treasurer of the Plutoria Uni- 
versity), and stated that he proposed to give 
his lectures for nothing. The trustees of the 
college protested; they urged that the case 
might set a dangerous precedent which other 
professors might follow. While fully admit- 
ting that Dr. McTeague's lectures were well 
worth giving for nothing, they begged him to 
reconsider his offer. But he refused; and from 
that day on, in spite of all offers that he should 
retire on double his salary, that he should visit 
the Holy Land, or Syria, or Armenia, where 
the dreadful massacres of Christians were tak- 
ing place, Dr. McTeague clung to his post with 
a tenacity worthy of the best traditions of Scot- 
land. His only internal perplexity was that 
he didn't see how, when the time came for him 
209 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

to die, twenty or thirty years hence, they would 
ever be able to replace him. 

Such was the situation of the two churches 
on a certain beautiful morning in June, when an 
unforeseen event altered entirely the current of 
their fortunes. 

"No, thank you, Juliana," said the young 
rector to his sister across the breakfast table, — 
and there was something as near to bitterness 
in his look as his saintly, smooth-shaven face 
was capable of reflecting, — "no, thank you, 
no more porridge. Prunes? no, no, thank you; 
I don't think I care for any. And, by the 
way," he added, "don't bother to keep any 
lunch for me. I have a great deal of busi- 
ness — that is, of work in the parish, — to see 
to, and I must just find time to get a bite of 
something to eat when and where I can." 

In his own mind he was resolving that the 
place should be the Mausoleum Club and the 
time just as soon as the head waiter would 
serve him. 

After which the Reverend Edward Fareforth 
Furlong bowed his head for a moment in a 
short, silent blessing, — the one prescribed by 
the episcopal church in America for a break- 
fast of porridge and prunes. 

It was their first breakfast together, and it 
spoke volumes to the rector. He knew what 

210 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

it implied. It stood for his elder sister Juli- 
ana's views on the need of personal sacrifice 
as a means of grace. The rector sighed as he 
rose. He had never missed his younger sister 
Philippa, now married and departed, so keenly. 
Philippa had had opinions of her own on bacon 
and eggs and on lamb chops with watercress as 
a means of stimulating the soul. But Juliana 
was different. The rector understood now ex- 
actly why it was that his father had exclaimed, 
on the news of Philippa's engagement, with- 
out a second's hesitation, "Then, of course, 
Juliana must live with you ! Nonsense, my 
dear boy, nonsense! It's my duty to spare 
her to you. After all, I can always eat at the 
club; they can give me a bite of something or 
other, surely. To a man of my age, Edward, 
food is really of no consequence. No, no; 
Juliana must move into the rectory at once." 

The rector's elder sister rose. She looked 
tall and sallow and forbidding in the plain black 
dress that contrasted sadly with the charming 
clerical costumes of white and pink and the 
broad episcopal hats with flowers in them that 
Philippa used to wear for morning work in 
the parish. 

"For what time shall I order dinner?" she 
asked. "You and Philippa used to have it at 
half-past seven, did you not? Don't you think, 
that rather too late?" 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"A trifle, perhaps," said the rector uneasily. 
He didn't care to explain to Juliana that it 
was impossible to get home any earlier from 
the kind of the dansant that everybody was 
giving just now. "But don't trouble about 
dinner. I may be working very late. If I 
need anything to eat I shall get a biscuit and 
some tea at the Guild Rooms, or " 

He didn't finish the sentence, but in his mind 
he added, " or else a really first-class dinner at 
the Mausoleum Club, or at the Newberrys' or 
the Rasselyer-Browns' — anywhere except here." 

"If you are going, then," said Juliana, "may 
I have the key of the church." 

A look of pain passed over the rector's face. 
He knew perfectly well what Juliana wanted 
the key for. She meant to go into his church 
and pray in it. 

The rector of St Asaph's was, he trusted, 
as broad-minded a man as an Anglican clergy- 
man ought to be. He had no objection to any 
reasonable use of his church — for a thanksgiv- 
ing festival or for musical recitals, for example 
— but when it came to opening up the church 
and using it to pray in, the thing was going 
a little too far. What was more, he had an 
idea from the look on Juliana's face that she 
meant to pray for him. This, for a clergy- 
man, was hard to bear. Philippa, like the good 
girl that she was, had prayed only for herself, 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

and then only at the proper times and places, 
and in a proper praying costume. The rector 
began to realise what difficulties it might make 
for a clergyman to have a religious sister as 
his house-mate. 

But he was never a man for unseemly argu- 
ment. "It is hanging in my study," he said. 

And with that the Rev. Fareforth Furlong 
passed into the hall, took up the simple silk hat, 
the stick and gloves of the working clergyman, 
and walked out on to the avenue to begin his 
day's work in the parish. 

The rector's parish, viewed in its earthly 
aspect, was a singularly beautiful place. For 
it extended all along Plutoria Avenue, where 
the street is widest and the elm trees are at 
their leafiest and the motors at their very 
drowsiest. It lay up and down the shaded side 
streets of the residential district, darkened with 
great chestnuts and hushed in a stillness that 
was almost religion itself. There was not a 
house in the parish assessed at less than twenty- 
five thousand, and in the very heart of it the 
Mausoleum Club, with its smooth white stone 
and its Grecian architecture, carried one back 
to the ancient world and made one think of 
Athens and of Paul preaching on Mars Hill. 
It was, all considered, a splendid thing to fight 
sin in such a parish and to keep it out of it. 
For kept out it was. One might look the length 
213 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

and breadth of the broad avenue and see no 
sign of sin all along it. There was certainly 
none in the smooth faces of the chauffeurs 
trundling their drowsy motors; no sign of it in 
the expensive children paraded by imported 
nursemaids in the chequered light of the shaded 
street; least of all was there any sign of it in 
the Stock Exchange members of the congrega- 
tion as they walked along side by side to their 
lunch at the Mausoleum Club, their silk hats 
nodding together in earnest colloquy on Shares 
Preferred, and Profits Undivided. So might 
have walked, so must have walked, the very 
Fathers of the Church themselves. 

Whatever sin there was in the City was 
shoved sideways into the roaring streets of com- 
merce where the elevated railway ran, and be- 
low that again into the slums. Here there 
must have been any quantity of sin. The rector 
of St. Asaph's was certain of it. Many of the 
richer of his parishioners had been down in 
parties late at night to look at it, and the ladies 
of his congregation were joined together Into 
all sorts of guilds and societies and bands of 
endeavour for stamping it out and driving it 
under or putting it into jail till it surrendered. 

But the slums lay outside the rector's parish. 
He had no right to Interfere. They were under 
the charge of a special mission or auxiliary, 
a remnant of the St. Asaph's of the past, placed 

214 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 



under the care of a divinity student, at four 
hundred dollars per annum. His charge in- 
cluded all the slums and three police-courts and 
two music-halls and the City jail. One Sun- 
day afternoon in every three months the rector 
and several ladies went down and sang hymns 
for him in his mission-house. But his work 
was really very easy. A funeral, for example, 
at the mission, was a simple affair, meaning 
nothing more than the preparation of a plain 
coffin and a glassless hearse and the distribu- 
tion of a few artificial everlasting flowers to 
women crying in their aprons; a thing easily 
done: whereas In St. Asaph's parish, where 
all the really important souls were, a funeral 
was a large event, requiring taste and tact, 
and a nice shading of delicacy in distinguishing 
mourners from beneficiaries, and private grief 
from business representation at the ceremony. 
A funeral with a plain coffin and a hearse was 
as nothing beside an interment, with a casket 
smothered in hot-house syringas, borne in a 
coach and followed by special reporters from 
the financial papers. 

It appeared to the rector afterwards as 
almost a shocking coincidence that the first per- 
son whom he met upon the avenue should have 
been the Rev. Dr. McTeague himself. Mr. 
Furlong gave him the form of amiable "good 
215 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

morning " that the episcopal church always ex- 
tends to those in error. But he did not hear 
it. The minister's head was bent low, his eyes 
gazed into vacancy, and from the movements 
of his lips and from the fact that he carried a 
leather case of notes, he was plainly on his way 
to his philosophical lecture. But the rector had 
no time to muse upon the abstracted appear- 
ance of his rival. For, as always happened to 
him, he was no sooner upon the street than his 
parish work of the day began. In fact, he had 
hardly taken a dozen steps after passing Dr. 
McTeague when he was brought up standing 
by two beautiful parishioners with pink para- 
sols. 

"Oh, Mr. Furlong," exclaimed one of them, 
"so fortunate to happen to catch you ; we were 
just going into the rectory to consult you. 
Should the girls — for the lawn tea for the Guild 
on Friday, you know — wear white dresses with 
light blue sashes all the same, or do you think 
we might allow them to wear any coloured 
sashes that they like? What do you think?" 

This was an important problem. In fact, 
there was a piece of parish work here that it 
took the Reverend Fareforth half an hour to 
attend to, standing the while In earnest collo- 
quy with the two ladies under the shadow of 
the elm trees. But a clergyman must never be 
grudging of his time. 

216 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"Good-bye, then," they said at last. "Are 
you coming to the Browning Club this morn- 
ing? Oh, so sorry! but we shall see you at 
the musicale this afternoon, shall we not?" 

"Oh, I trust so," said the rector. 

"How dreadfully hard he works," said the 
ladies to one another as they moved away. 

Thus slowly and with many interruptions 
the rector made his progress along the avenue. 
At times he stopped to permit a pink-cheeked 
infant in a perambulator to beat him with a 
rattle while he inquired its age of an episcopal 
nurse, gay with flowing ribbons. He lifted his 
hat to the bright parasols of his parishioners 
passing in glistening motors, bowed to episcopa- 
lians, nodded amiably to presbyterians, and even 
acknowledged with his lifted hat the passing of 
persons of graver forms of error. 

Thus he took his way along the avenue and 
down a side street towards the business dis- 
trict of the City, until just at the edge of it, 
where the trees were about to stop and the 
shops were about to begin, he found himself at 
the door of the Hymnal Supply Corporation, 
Limited. The premises as seen from the out- 
side combined the idea of an office with an 
ecclesiastical appearance. The door was as 
that of a chancel or vestry; there was a large 
plate-glass window filled with Bibles and Testa- 
ments, all spread open and shewing every va- 
217 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

riety of language in their pages. These 
were marked, "Arabic," "Syriac," "Coptic," 
"Ojibway," "Irish" and so forth. On the 
window in small white lettering were the words, 
"Hymnal Supply Corporation," and below 
that "Hosanna Pipe and Steam Organ In- 
corporated," and still lower the legend, "Bible 
Society of the Good Shepherd Limited." 

There was no doubt of the sacred character 
of the place. 

Here laboured Mr. Furlong senior, the 
father of the Rev. Edward Fareforth. He was 
a man of many activities, president and man- 
aging director of the companies just mentioned, 
trustee and secretary of St. Asaph's, honorary 
treasurer of the university, etc.; and each of 
his occupations and offices was marked by some- 
thing of a supramundane character, something 
higher than ordinary business. His different 
official positions naturally overlapped and 
brought him into contact with himself from 
a variety of angles. Thus he sold himself 
hymn-books at a price per thousand, made as 
a business favour to himself, negotiated with 
himself the purchase of the ten thousand dollar 
organ (making a price on it to himself that 
he begged himself to regard as confidential), 
and as treasurer of the college he sent himself 
an informal note of enquiry asking If he knew 
of any sound investment for the annual deficit 
218 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

of the college funds, a matter of some sixty 
thousand dollars a year, which needed very 
careful handling. Any man — and there are 
many such — who has been concerned with busi- 
ness dealings of this sort with himself realises 
that they are more satisfactory than any other 
kind. 

To what better person then could the rector 
of St. Asaph's bring the quarterly accounts and 
statements of his church than to Mr. Furlong 
senior. 

The outer door was opened to the rector by 
a sanctified boy with such a face as is only 
found In the choirs of the episcopal church. 
In an outer office through which the rector 
passed were two sacred stenographers with 
hair as golden as the daffodils of Sheba, copy- 
ing confidential letters on absolutely noiseless 
typewriters. They were making offers of Bibles 
In half-car-load lots at two and a half per cent, 
reduction, offering to reduce St. Mark by two 
cents on condition of immediate export, and 
to lay down St. John F.O.B. San Francisco for 
seven cents, while regretting that they could 
deliver fifteen thousand Rock of Ages In Mis- 
souri on no other terms than cash. 

The sacred character of their work lent them 
a preoccupation beautiful to behold. 

In the room beyond them was a white-haired 
confidential clerk, venerable as the Song of 
219 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Solomon, and by him Mr. Fareforth Furlong 
was duly shown Into the office of his father. 

"Good-morning, Edward," said Mr. Furlong 
senior, as he shook hands. "I was expecting 
you. And while I think of It, I have just had 
a letter from Phlllppa. She and Tom will 
be home In two or three weeks. She writes 
from Egypt. She wishes me to tell you, as no 
doubt you have already anticipated, that she 
thinks she can hardly continue to be a member 
of the congregation when they come back. No 
doubt you felt this yourself?" 

"Oh, entirely," said the rector. "Surely 
In matters of belief a wife must follow her hus- 
band." 

"Exactly; especially as Tom's uncles occupy 

the position they do with regard to " Mr. 

Furlong jerked his head backwards and pointed 
with his thumb over his shoulder in a way that 
his son knew was meant to Indicate St. Osoph's 
Church. 

The Overend brothers, who were Tom's 
uncles (his name being Tom Overend) were, as 
everybody knew, among the principal support- 
ers of St. Osoph's. Not that they were, by 
origin, presbyterians. But they were self-made 
men, which put them once and for all out of 
sympathy with such a place as St. Asaph's. 
"We made ourselves," the two brothers used 
to repeat. In defiance of the catechism of the 

220 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Anglican Church. They never wearied of ex- 
plaining how Mr. Dick, the senior brother, 
had worked overtime by day to send Mr. 
George, the junior brother, to school by night, 
and how Mr. George had then worked over- 
time by night to send Mr. Dick to school by 
day. Thus they had come up the business 
ladder hand over hand, landing later on in life 
on the platform of success Hke two corpulent 
acrobats, panting with the strain of it. "For 
years," Mr. George would explain, "we had 
father and mother to keep as well; then they 
died, and Dick and me saw daylight." By 
which he meant no harm at all, but only stated 
a fact, and concealed the virtue of it. 

And being self-made men they made It a 
point to do what they could to lessen the im- 
portance of such an institution as St. Asaph's 
Church. By the same contrariety of nature the 
two Overend brothers (their business name 
was Overend Brothers, Limited) were support- 
ers of the dissentient Young Men's Guild, and 
the second or rival University Settlement, and 
of anything or everything that showed a likeli- 
hood of making trouble. On this principle they 
were warm supporters and friends of the Rev. 
Dr. McTeague. The minister had even gone 
so far as to present to the brothers a copy 
of his philosophical work, " McTeague's Expo- 
sition of the Kantian Hypothesis," and the two 

221 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

brothers had read it through in the office, de- 
voting each of them a whole morning to it. 
Mr. Dick, the senior brother, had said that he 
had never seen anything Hke it, and Mr. 
George, the junior, had declared that a man 
who could write that was capable of anything. 

On the whole it was evident that the rela- 
tions between the Overend family and the pres- 
byterian religion were too intimate to allow 
Mrs. Tom Overend, formerly Miss Philippa 
Furlong, to sit anywhere else of a Sunday than 
under Dr. McTeague. 

"Philippa writes," continued Mr. Furlong, 
"that under the circumstances she and Tom 
would like to do something for your church. 
She would like — yes, I have the letter here — to 
give you, as a surprise, of course, either a new 
font or a carved pulpit; or perhaps a cheque; 
she wishes me on no account to mention it to 
you directly, but to ascertain indirectly from 
you, what would be the better surprise." 

"Oh, a cheque, I think," said the rector; 
"one can do so much more with it, after all." 

"Precisely," said his father; he was well 
aware of many things that can be done with a 
cheque that cannot possibly be done with a 
font. 

"That's settled then," resumed Mr. Fur- 
long; "and now I suppose you want me to run 
my eye over your quarterly statements, do 

222 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

you not, before we send them in to the trus- 
tees? That Is what you've come for, is It 
not?" 

"Yes," said the rector, drawing a bundle of 
blue and white papers from his pocket. "I 
have everything with me. Our shewing Is, I 
believe, excellent, though I fear I fail to present 
it as clearly as It might be done." 

Mr. Furlong senior spread the papers on 
the table before him and adjusted his spec- 
tacles to a more convenient angle. He smiled 
indulgently as he looked at the documents be- 
fore him. 

"I am afraid you would never make an ac- 
countant, Edward," he said. 

"I fear not," said the rector. 

"Your items," said his father, "are entered 
wrongly. Here, for example. In the general 
statement, you put down Distribution of Coals 
to the Poor to your credit. In the same way, 
Bibles and Prizes to the Sunday School you 
again mark to your credit. Why? Don't you 
see, my boy, that these things are debits? When 
you give out Bibles or distribute fuel to the 
poor you give out something for which you get 
no return. It is a debit. On the other hand, 
such Items as Church Offertory, Scholars' Pen- 
nies, etc., are pure profit. Surely the principle 
is clear." 

223 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"I think I see it better now," said the Rev. 
Edward. 

"Perfectly plain, isn't it?" his father went 
on. "And here again. Paupers' Burial Fund, 
a loss; enter it as such. Christmas Gift to 
Verger and Sexton, an absolute loss — you get 
nothing in return. Widow's Mite, Fines in- 
flicted in Sunday School, etc., these are profit; 
write them down as such. By this method, you 
see, in ordinary business we can tell exactly 
where we stand: anything which we give out 
without return or reward we count as a debit; 
all that we take from others without giving in 
return we count as so much to our credit." 

"Ah, yes," murmured the rector. "I begin 
to understand." 

"Very good. But after all, Edward, I 
mustn't quarrel with the mere form of your 
accounts; the statement is really a splendid 
shewing. I see that not only is our mortgage 
and debenture interest all paid to date, but that 
a number of our enterprises are making a hand- 
some return. I notice, for example, that the 
Girls' Friendly Society of the church not only 
pays for itself, but that you are able to take 
something out of its funds and transfer it to 
the Men's Book Club. Excellent! And I ob- 
serve that you have been able to take a large 
portion of the Soup Kitchen Fund and put it 
into the Rector's Picnic Account. Very good 
224 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

indeed. In this respect your figures are a model 
for church accounts anywhere." 

Mr. Furlong continued his scrutiny of the 
accounts. "Excellent," he murmured, "and 
on the whole an annual surplus, I see, of sev- 
eral thousands. But stop a bit," he continued, 
checking himself; "what's this? Are you 
aware, Edward, that you are losing money on. 
your Foreign Missions Account?" 

"I feared as much," said Edward. 

"It's incontestable. Look at the figures for 
yourself: missionary's salary so much, clothes 
and books to converts so much, voluntary and 
other offerings of converts so much — why, 
you're losing on it, Edward!" exclaimed Mr. 
Furlong, and he shook his head dubiously at 
the accounts before him. 

"I thought," protested his son, "that in view 
of the character of the work itself " 

"Quite so," answered his father, "quite so. 
I fully admit the force of that. I am only 
asking you, is it worth it? Mind you, I am 
not speaking now as a Christian, but as a 
business man. Is it worth it?" 

"I thought that perhaps, in view of the fact 
of our large surplus in other directions " 

"Exactly," said his father, "a heavy sur- 
plus. It is precisely on that point that I wished 
to speak to you this morning. You have at 
present a large annual surplus, and there is 

225 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

every prospect under Providence — In fact, I 
think In any case — of It continuing for years to 
come. If I may speak very frankly I should 
say that as long as our reverend friend Dr. 
McTeague continues In his charge of St. 
Osoph's — and I trust that he may be spared 
for many years to come — you are likely to en- 
joy the present prosperity of your church. Very 
good. The question arises, what disposition 
are we to make of our accumulating funds?" 

"Yes," said the rector, hesitating. 

"I am speaking to you now," said his father, 
"not as the secretary of your church, but as 
president of the Hymnal Supply Company 
which I represent here. Now please under- 
stand, Edward, I don't want in any way to 
force or control your judgment. I merely wish 
to shew you certain — shall I say certain oppor- 
tunities that present themselves for the dis- 
posal of our funds? The matter can be taken 
up later, formally, by yourself and the trus- 
tees of the church. As a matter of fact, I have 
already written to myself as secretary in the 
matter, and I have received what I consider a 
quite encouraging answer. Let me explain what 
I propose." 

Mr. Furlong senior rose, and opening the 
door of the office, 

"Everett," he said to the ancient clerk, 
"kindly give me a Bible." 
226 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

It was given to him. 

Mr. Furlong stood with the Bible poised In. 
his hand. 

"Now we," he went on, "I mean the Hym- 
nal Supply Corporation, have an idea for bring- 
ing out an entirely new Bible." 

A look of dismay appeared on the saintly 
face of the rector. 

"A new Bible!" he gasped. 

"Precisely!" said his father, "a new Bible! 
This one — and we find it every day in our busi- 
ness — is all wrong." 

"All wrong!" said the rector with horror 
in his face. 

"My dear boy," exclaimed his father, "pray, 
pray, do not misunderstand me. Don't 
imagine for a moment that I mean wrong In 
a religious sense. Such a thought could never, 
I hope, enter my mind. All that I mean is 
that this Bible is badly made up." 

"Badly made up!" repeated his son, as 
mystified as ever. 

"I see that you do not understand me. What 
I mean is this. Let me try to make myself 
quite clear. For the market of to-day this 
Bible" — and he poised it again on his hand, 
as if to test its weight, "is too hea\7. The 
people of to-day want something lighter, some- 
thing easier to get hold of. Now if " 

227 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

But what Mr. Furlong was about to say 
was lost forever to the world. 

For just at this juncture something occurred 
calculated to divert not only Mr. Furlong's 
sentence, but the fortunes and the surplus of 
St. Asaph's itself. At the very moment when 
Mr. Furlong was speaking a newspaper de- 
livery man in the street outside handed to the 
sanctified boy the office copy of the noonday 
paper. And the boy had no sooner looked at 
its headlines than he said, "How dreadful!" 
Being sanctified, he had no stronger form of 
speech than that. But he handed the paper 
forthwith to one of the stenographers with 
hair like the daffodils of Sheba, and when she 
looked at it she exclaimed, "How awful!" 
And she knocked at once at the door of the 
ancient clerk and gave the paper to him; and 
when he looked at it and saw the headline the 
ancient clerk murmured, "Ah!" in the gentle 
tone in which very old people greet the news 
of catastrophe or sudden death. 

But in his turn he opened Mr. Furlong's door 
and put down the paper, laying his finger on 
the column for a moment without a word. 

Mr. Furlong stopped short in his sentence. 
"Dear me!" he said as his eyes caught the 
item of news. "How very dreadful!" 

"What is it?" said the rector. 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"Dr. McTeague," answered his father. "He 
has been stricken with paralysis!" 

"How shocking!" said the rector, aghast. 
"But when? I saw him only this morning." 

"It has just happened," said his father, fol- 
lowing down the column of the newspaper as 
he spoke, "this morning, at the university, in 
his classroom, at a lecture. Dear me, how 
dreadful! I must go and see the president at 
once." 

Mr. Furlong was about to reach for his hat 
and stick when at that moment the aged clerk 
knocked at the door. 

"Dr. Boomer," he announced in a tone of 
solemnity suited to the occasion. 

Dr. Boomer entered, shook hands In silence 
and sat down. 

"You have heard our sad news, I suppose?" 
he said. He used the word "our" as between 
the university president and his honorary 
treasurer. 

"How did it happen?" asked Mr. Furlong. 

"Most distressing, "said the president. "Dr. 
McTeague, it seems, had just entered his 
ten o'clock class (the hour was about ten- 
twenty) and was about to open his lecture, when 
one of his students rose In his seat and asked 
a question. It Is a practice," continued Dr. 
Boomer, " which, I need hardly say, we do not 
encourage; the young man, I believe, was a 
229 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

new-comer in the philosophy class. At any 
rate, he asked Dr. McTeague, quite suddenly 
it appears, how he could reconcile his theory 
of transcendental Immaterialism with a scheme 
of rigid moral determinism. Dr. McTeague 
stared for a moment, his mouth, so the class 
assert, painfully open. The student repeated 
the question, and poor McTeague fell forward 
over his desk, paralysed." 

"Is he dead?" gasped Mr. Furlong. 

"No," said the president. "But we expect 
his death at any moment. Dr. Slyder, I may 
say, is with him now and is doing all he can." 

"In any case, I suppose, he could hardly 
recover enough to continue his college duties," 
said the young rector. 

"Out of the question," said the president. 
"I should not like to state that of itself mere 
paralysis need incapacitate a professor. Dr. 
Thrum, our professor of the theory of music, 
is, as you know, paralysed in his ears, and Mr. 
Slant, our professor of optics, is paralysed in 
his right eye. But this is a case of paralysis of 
the brain. I fear it is incompatible with pro- 
fessorial work." 

"Then, I suppose," said Mr. Furlong senior, 
"we shall have to think of the question of a 
successor." 

They had both been thinking of it for at 
least three minutes. 

230 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"We must," said the president. "For the 
moment I feel too stunned by the sad news to 
act. I have merely telegraphed to two or three 
leading colleges for a locum tenens and sent out 
a few advertisements announcing the chair as 
vacant. But it will be difficult to replace Mc- 
Teague. He was a man," added Dr. Boomer,^ 
rehearsing in advance, unconsciously, no doubt, 
his forthcoming oration over Dr. McTeague's 
death, "of a singular grasp, a breadth of cul- 
ture, and he was able, as few men are, to instil 
what I might call a spirit of religion into his 
teaching. His lectures, indeed, were suffused 
with moral instruction, and exercised over his 
students an influence second only to that of the 
pulpit itself." 

He paused. 

"Ah yes, the pulpit," said Mr. Furlong, 
"there indeed you will miss him." 

"That," said Dr. Boomer very reverently, 
"Is our real loss, deep, irreparable. I sup- 
pose, indeed I am certain, we shall never again 
see such a man in the pulpit of St. Osoph's. 
Which reminds me," he added more briskly, 
"I must ask the newspaper people to let it be 
known that there will be service as usual the 
day after to-morrow, and that Dr. McTeague's 
death will, of course, make no difference — that 
is to say — I must see the newspaper people at 
once." 



231 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

That afternoon all the newspaper editors in 
the City were busy getting their obituary notices 
ready for the demise of Dr. McTeague. 

"The death of Dr. McTeague," wrote the 
editor of the Commercial and Financial Under- 
tone, a paper which had almost openly advo- 
cated the minister's dismissal for five years 
back, "comes upon us as an irreparable loss. 
His place will be difficult, nay, impossible, to 
fill. Whether as a philosopher or a divine he 
cannot be replaced." 

"We have no hesitation in saying," so wrote 
the editor of the Plntorian Times, a three-cent 
morning paper, which was able to take a broad 
or three-cent point of view of men and things, 
"that the loss of Dr. McTeague will be just as 
much felt in Europe as in America. To Ger- 
many the news that the hand that penned 'Mc- 
Teague's Shorter Exposition of the Kantian 
Hypothesis' has ceased to write will come with 
the shock of poignant anguish; while to 
France " 

The editor left the article unfinished at that 
point. After all, he was a ready writer, and 
he reflected that there would be time enough 
before actually going to press to consider from 
what particular angle the blow of McTeague's 
death would strike down the people of France. 

So ran in speech and in writing, during two 
or three days, the requiem of Dr. McTeague. 
232 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Altogether there were more kind things said 
of him in the three days during which he was 
taken for dead, than in thirty years of his life 
— which seemed a pity. 

And after it all, at the close of the third day, 
Dr. McTeague feebly opened his eyes. 

But when he opened them the world had 
already passed on, and left him behind. 



233 



Chapter VII. — The Ministrations of the 
Rev. Uttermust Dumfarthin^ 

WELL then, gentlemen, I think we 
have all agreed upon our man?" 
Mr. Dick Overend looked 
around the table as he spoke at 
the managing trustees of St. Osoph's church. 
They were assembled in an upper committee 
room of the Mausoleum Club. Their official 
place of meeting was in a board room off the 
vestry of the church. But they had felt a 
draught in it, some four years ago, which had 
wafted them over to the club as their place of 
assembly. In the club there were no draughts. 

Mr. Dick Overend sat at the head of the 
table, his brother George beside him, and Dr. 
Boomer at the foot. Beside them were Mr. 
Boulder, Mr. Skinyer (of Skinyer and Beatem) 
and the rest of the trustees. 

"You are agreed, then, on the Reverend 
Uttermust Dumfarthing?" 

"Quite agreed," murmured several trustees 
together. 

"A most remarkable man," said Dr. Boomer. 
"I heard him preach in his present church. He 
gave utterance to thoughts that I have myself 
234 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

been thinking for years. I never listened to any- 
thing so sound or so scholarly." 

"I heard him the night he preached in New 
York," said Mr. Boulder. "He preached a 
sermon to the poor. He told them they were 
no good. I never heard, outside of a Scotch 
pulpit, such splendid Invective." 

"Is he Scotch?" said one of the trustees. 

"Of Scotch parentage," said the university 
president. "I believe he is one of the Dum- 
farthings of Dumferline, Dumfries." 

Everybody said "Oh," and there was a pause. 

"Is he married?" asked one of the trustees. 
"I understand," answered Dr. Boomer, "that 
he is a widower with one child, a little girl." 

"Does he make any conditions?" 

"None whatever," said the chairman, con- 
sulting a letter before him, "except that he is 
to have absolute control, and in, regard to sal- 
ary. These two points settled, he says, he 
places himself entirely In our hands." 

"And the salary?" asked someone. 

"Ten thousand dollars," said the chairman, 
"payable quarterly In advance." 

A chorus of approval went round the table. 
"Good," "Excellent," "A first-class man," mut- 
tered the trustees, "just what we want." 

"I am sure, gentlemen," said Mr. Dick Over- 
end, voicing the sentiments of everybody, "we 
do not want a cheap man. Several of the can- 
235 



Arcadian Adventures "with the Idle Rich 

didates whose names have been under consider- 
ation here have been in many respects — in point 
of religious quahfication, let us say — most de- 
sirable men. The name of Dr. McSkwirt, for 
example, has been mentioned with great favour 
by several of the trustees. But he's a cheap 
man. I feel we don't want him." 

"What is Mr. Dumfarthing getting where 
he is?" asked Mr. Boulder. 

"Nine thousand nine hundred," said the 
chairman. 

"And Dr. McSkwirt?" 

"Fourteen hundred dollars." 

"Well, that settles it!" exclaimed everybody 
with a burst of enlightenment. 

And so it was settled. 

In fact, nothing could have been plainer. 

"I suppose," said Mr. George Overend as 
they were about to rise, "that we are quite 
justified in taking it for granted that Dr. Mc- 
Teague will never be able to resume work?" 

"Oh, absolutely for granted," said Dr. 
Boomer. "Poor McTeague ! I hear from 
Slyder that he was making desperate efforts this 
morning to sit up in bed. His nurse with diffi- 
culty prevented him." 

"Is his power of speech gone?" asked Mr. 
Boulder. 

"Practically so; in any case, Dr. Slyder in- 
sists on his not using It. In fact, poor Mc- 
236 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Teague's mind Is a wreck. His nurse was tell- 
ing me that this morning he was reaching out 
his hand for the newspaper, and seemed to 
want to read one of the editorials. It was 
quite pathetic," concluded Dr. Boomer, shak- 
ing his head. 

So the whole matter was settled, and next 
day all the town knew that St. Osoph's Church 
had extended a call to the Rev. Uttermust Dum- 
farthing, and that he had accepted it. 

Within a few weeks of this date the Rever- 
end Uttermust Dumfarthing moved into the 
manse of St. Osoph's and assumed his charge. 
And forthwith he became the sole topic of 
conversation on Plutoria Avenue. "Have you 
seen the new minister of St. Osoph's?" every- 
body asked. "Have you been to hear Dr. Dum- 
farthing?" "Were you at St. Osoph's Church 
on Sunday morning? Ah, you really should 
go! most striking sermon I ever listened to." 

The effect of him was absolute and instan- 
taneous; there was no doubt of it. 

"My dear," said Mrs. Buncomhearst to one 
of her friends, in describing how she had met 
him, "I never saw a more striking man. Such 
power in his face! Mr. Boulder introduced 
him to me on the avenue, and he hardly seemed 
to see me at all, simply scowled ! I was never 
so favourably impressed with any man." 
237 



Arcadian Adventures tvith the Idle Rich 

On his very first Sunday he preached to his 
congregation on eternal punishment, leaning 
forward In his black gown and shaking his fist 
at them. Dr. McTeague had never shaken his 
fist in thirty years, and as for the Rev. Fare- 
forth Furlong, he was incapable of it. 

But the Rev. Uttermust Dumfarthing told his 
congregation that he was convinced that at least 
seventy per cent, of them were destined for 
eternal punishment; and he didn't call it by 
that name, but labelled it simply and forcibly 
"hell." The word had not been heard in any 
church in the better part of the City for a gen- 
eration. The congregation was so swelled next 
Sunday that the minister raised the percentage 
to eighty-five, and everybody went away de- 
lighted. Young and old flocked to St. Osoph's. 
Before a month had passed the congregation 
at the evening service at St. Asaph's Church 
was so slender that the offertory, as Mr. 
Furlong senior himself calculated, was scarcely 
sufficient to pay the overhead charge of collect- 
ing it. 

The presence of so many young men sitting 
in serried files close to the front was the only 
feature of his congregation that extorted from 
the Rev. Mr. Dumfarthing something like ap- 
proval. 

"It is joy to me to see," he remarked to sev- 
eral of his trustees, "that there are in the City 
238 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

so many godly young men, whatever the elders 
may be." 

But there may have been a secondary cause 
at work, for among the godly young men of 
Plutoria Avenue the topic of conversation had 
not been, "Have you heard the new presby- 
terian minister?" but, "Have you seen his 
daughter? You haven't? Well, say!" 

For it turned out that the "child" of Dr. 
Uttermust Dumfarthing, so-called by the trus- 
tees, was the kind of child that wears a little 
round hat, straight from Paris, with an upright 
feather in it, and a silk dress in four sections, 
and shoes with high heels that would have 
broken the heart of John Calvin. Moreover, 
she had the distinction of being the only person 
on Plutoria Avenue who was not one whit 
afraid of the Reverend Uttermust Dumfarth- 
ing. She even amused herself, in violation 
of all rules, by attending evening service 
at St. Asaph's, where she sat listening to 
the Reverend Edward, and feeling that she 
had never heard anything so sensible in her 
life. 

"I'm simply dying to meet your brother," she 
said to Mrs. Tom Overend, otherwise Philippa; 
"he's such a complete contrast with father." 
She knew no higher form of praise. "Father's 
sermons are always so frightfully full of re- 
ligion." 

239 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

And Philippa promised that meet him she 
should. 

But whatever may have been the effect of the 
presence of Catherine Dumfarthing, there is no 
doubt the greater part of the changed situation 
was due to Dr. Dumfarthing himself. 

Everything he did was calculated to please. 
He preached sermons to the rich and told them 
they were mere cobwebs, and they liked it; he 
preached a special sermon to the poor and 
warned them to be mighty careful ; he gave a 
series of weekly talks to working men, and 
knocked them sideways; and in the Sunday 
School he gave the children so fierce a talk on 
charity and the need of giving freely and 
quickly, that such a stream of pennies and 
nickels poured into Catherine Dumfarthing's 
Sunday School Fund as hadn't been seen in the 
church in fifty years. 

Nor was Mr. Dumfarthing different in his 
private walk of life. He was heard to speak 
openly of the Overend brothers as "men of 
wrath," and they were so pleased that they 
repeated it to half the town. It was the best 
business advertisement they had had for years. 

Dr. Boomer was captivated with the man. 
"True scholarship," he murmured, as Dr. Dum- 
farthing poured undiluted Greek and Hebrew 
from the pulpit, scorning to translate a word 
of it. Under Dr. Boomer's charge the min- 
240 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

ister was taken over the length and breadth 
of Plutoria University, and reviled it from the 
foundations up. 

"Our library," said the president, "two hun- 
dred thousand volumes!" 

"Aye," said the minister, "a powerful heap 
of rubbish, I'll be bound!" 

"The photograph of our last year's gradu- 
ating class," said the president. 

"A poor lot, to judge by the faces of them," 
said the minister. 

"This, Dr. Dumfarthing, is our new radio- 
graphic laboratory; Mr. Spiff, our demon- 
strator, is preparing slides which, I believe, ac- 
tually show the movements of the atom itself, 
do they not, Mr. Spiff?" 

"Ah," said the minister, piercing Mr. SpifF 
from beneath his dark brows, "it will not avail 
you, young man." 

Dr. Boomer was delighted. "Poor Mc- 
Teague," he said — ^"and by the way, Boyster, I 
hear that McTeague is trying to walk again; 
a great error, it shouldn't be allowed! — poor 
McTeague knew nothing of science." 

The students themselves shared in the en- 
thusiasm, especially after Dr. Dumfarthing had 
given them a Sunday afternoon talk in which 
he shewed that their studies were absolutely 
futile. As soon as they knew this they went 
241 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

to work with a vigour that put new life into 
the college. 

Meantime the handsome face of the Rever- 
end Edward Fareforth Furlong began to wear 
a sad and weary look that had never been seen 
on it before. He watched his congregation 
drifting from St. Asaph's to St. Osoph's and 
was powerless to prevent it. His sadness 
reached its climax one bright afternoon in the 
late summer, when he noticed that even his 
episcopal blackbirds were leaving his elms and 
moving westward to the spruce trees of the 
manse. 

He stood looking at them with melancholy 
on his face. 

"Why, Edward," cried his sister Philippa, as 
her motor stopped beside him, "how doleful 
you look! Get into the car and come out into 
the country for a ride. Let the parish teas look 
after themselves for to-day." 

Tom, Philippa's husband, was driving his 
own car — he was rich enough to be able to — 
and seated with Philippa in the car was an 
unknown person, as prettily dressed as Philippa 
herself. To the rector she was presently intro- 
duced as Miss Catherine Something — he didn't 
hear the rest of it. Nor did he need to. It 
was quite plain that her surname, whatever it 
242 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

was, was a very temporary and transitory 
affair. 

So they sped rapidly out of the City and 
away out into the country, mile after mile, 
through cool, crisp air, and among woods with 
the touch of autumn bright already upon them, 
and with blue sky and great still clouds white 
overhead. And the afternoon was so beautiful 
and so bright that as they went along there 
was no talk about religion at all ! nor was there 
any mention of Mothers' Auxiliaries, or Girls' 
Friendly Societies, nor any discussion of the 
poor. It was too glorious a day. But they 
spoke instead of the new dances, and whether 
they had come to stay, and of such sensible 
topics as that. Then presently, as they went 
on still further, Phillppa leaned forward and 
talked to Tom over his shoulder and reminded 
him that this was the very road to Castel Cas- 
teggio, and asked him if he remembered com- 
ing up It with her to join the Newberrys ever 
so long ago. Whatever it was that Tom an- 
swered it is not recorded, but it Is certain that 
it took so long In the saying that the Reverend 
Edward talked in tete-a-tete with Catherine for 
fifteen measured miles, and was unaware that 
It was more than five minutes. Among other 
things he said, and she agreed — or she said 
and he agreed — that for the new dances it was 
necessary to have always one and the same 
243 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

partner, and to keep that partner all the time. 
And somehow simple sentiments of that sort, 
when said direct into a pair of listening blue 
eyes behind a purple motor veil, acquire an 
infinite significance. 

Then, not much after that, say three or four 
minutes, they were all of a sudden back in 
town again, running along Plutoria Avenue, 
and to the rector's surprise the motor was 
stopping outside the manse, and Catherine was 
saying, "Oh, thank you ever so much, Philippa; 
it was just heavenly!" which showed that the 
afternoon had had its religious features after 
all. 

"What!" said the rector's sister, as they 
moved off again, "didn't you know? That's 
Catherine Dumfarthingl" 

When the Rev. Fareforth Furlong arrived 
home at the rectory he spent an hour or so in 
the deepest of deep thought in an arm-chair 
in his study. Nor was it any ordinary parish 
problem that he was revolving in his mind. 
He was trying to think out some means by 
which his sister Juliana might be induced to 
commit the sin of calling on the daughter of a 
presbyterian minister. 

The thing had to be represented as in some 
fashion or other an act of self-denial, a form of 
mortification of the flesh. Otherwise he knew 
244 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Juliana would never do It. But to call on Miss 
Catherine Dumfarthing seemed to him such an 
altogether delightful and unspeakably blissful 
process that he hardly knew how to approach 
the topic. So when Juliana presently came home 
the rector could find no better way of Intro- 
ducing the subject than by putting It on the 
ground of Phlllppa's marriage to Miss Dum- 
farthlng's father's trustee's nephew. 

"Juliana," he said, "don't you think that per- 
haps, on account of Phllippa and Tom, you 
ought — or at least It might be best — for you to 
call on Miss Dumfarthing?" 

Juliana turned to her brother as she laid 
aside her bonnet and her black gloves. 

"I've just been there this afternoon," she 
said. 

There was something as near to a blush on 
her face as her brother had ever seen. 

"But she was not there!" he said. 

"No," answered Juliana, "but Mr. Dum- 
farthing was. I stayed and talked some time 
with him, waiting for her." 

The rector gave a sort of whistle, or rather 
that blowing out of air which Is the episcopal 
symbol for It. 

"Didn't you find him pretty solemn?" he said. 

"Solemn 1" answered his sister. "Surely, 
Edward, a man in such a calling as his ought 
to be solemn." 

245 



Arcadian Adventures tcith the Idle Rich 

"I don't mean that exactly," said the rector; 
"I mean — er — hard, bitter, so to speak." 

"Edward!" exclaimed Juliana, "how can you 
speak so. Mr. Dumfarthing hard ! Mr. Dum- 
farthlng bitter! Why, Edward, the man is 
gentleness and kindness Itself. I don't think I 
ever met anyone so full of sympathy, of com- 
passion with suffering." 

Juliana's face had flushed. It was quite plain 
that she saw things In the Reverend Uttermust 
Dumfarthing — as some one woman does In 
every man — that no one else could see. 

The Reverend Edward was abashed. "I 
wasn't thinking of his character," he said. "I 
was thinking rather of his doctrines. Wait till 
you have heard him preach." 

Juliana flushed more deeply still. "I heard 
him last Sunday evening," she said. 

The rector was silent, and his sister, as If 
impelled to speak, went on, 

"And I don't see, Edward, how anyone could 
think him a hard or bigoted man In his creed. 
He walked home with me to the gate just now, 
and he was speaking of all the sin In the world, 
and of how few, how very few people, can be 
saved, and how many will have to be burned 
as worthless; and he spoke so beautifully. He 
regrets it, Edward, regrets It deeply. It Is a 
real grief to him." 

On which Juliana, half In anger, withdrew, 
246 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

and her brother the rector sat back In his chair 
with smiles rippling all over his saintly face. 
For he had been wondering whether it would 
be possible, even remotely possible, to get his 
sister to invite the Dumfarthings to high tea 
at the rectory some day at six o'clock (evening 
dinner was out of the question), and now he 
knew within himself that the thing was as good 
as done. 

While such things as these were happening 
and about to happen, there were many others 
of the congregation of St. Asaph's beside the 
rector to whom the growing situation gave cause 
for serious perplexities. Indeed, all who were 
interested in the church, the trustees and the 
mortgagees and the underlying debenture-hold- 
ers, were feeling anxious. For some of them 
underlay the Sunday School, whose scholars' 
offerings had declined forty per cent, and others 
underlay the new organ, not yet paid for, while 
others were lying deeper still beneath the 
ground site of the church with seven dollars 
and a half a square foot resting on them. 

"I don't like it," said Mr. Lucullus Fyshe 
to Mr. Newberry (they were both prominent 
members of the congregation). "I don't like 
the look of things. I took up a block of Fur- 
long's bonds on his Guild building from what 
seemed at the time the best of motives. The 
247 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

interest appeared absolutely certain. Now it's 
a month overdue on the last quarter. I feel 
alarmed." 

"Neither do I like it," said Mr. Newberry, 
shaking his head; "and I'm sorry for Fareforth 
Furlong. An excellent fellow, Fyshc, excellent. 
I keep wondering, Sunday after Sunday, if there 
isn't something I can do to help him out. One 
might do something further perhaps in the way 
of new buildings or alterations. I have, in fact, 
offered — by myself, I mean, and without other 
aid — to dynamite out the front of his church, 
underpin it, and put him in a Norman gateway; 
either that, or blast out the back of it where 
the choir sit, just as he likes. I was thinking 
about it last Sunday as they were singing the 
anthem, and realising what a lot one might do 
there with a few sticks of dynamite." 

"I doubt it," said Mr. Fyshe. "In fact, New- 
berry, to speak very frankly, I begin to ask 
myself. Is Furlong, the man for the post?" 

"Oh, surely," said Mr. Newberry in protest. 

"Personally a charming fellow," went on Mr. 
Fyshe; "but is he, all said and done, quite the 
man to conduct a church? In the first place, he 
is not a business man." 

"No," said Mr. Newberry reluctantly, "that 
I admit." 

"Very good. And, secondly, even in the mat- 
ter of his religion itself, one always feels as if 
248 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

he were too little fixed, too unstable. He simply 
moves with the times. That, at least, is what 
people are beginning to say of him, that he is 
perpetually moving with the times. It doesn't 
do, Xewberry, it doesn't do." 

Whereupon Mr. Newberry went away trou- 
bled and wrote to Fareforth Furlong a confi- 
dential letter with a signed cheque in it for the 
amount of Mr. Fyshe's interest, and with such 
further offerings of dynamite, of underpinning 
and blasting as his conscience prompted. 

When the rector received and read the note 
and saw the figures of the cheque, there arose 
such a thankfulness in his spirit as he hadn't 
felt for months, and he may well have mur- 
mured, for the repose of Mr. Newberry's soul, 
a prayer not found in the rubric of King James. 

All the more cause had he to feel light at 
heart, for as it chanced it was on that same 
evening that the Dumfarthings, father and 
daughter, were to take tea at the rectory. In- 
deed, a few minutes before six o'clock they 
might have been seen making their way from 
the manse to the rectory. 

On their way along the avenue the minister 
took occasion to reprove his daughter for the 
worldliness of her hat fit was a little trifle from 
New York that she had bought out of the Sun- 
day School money, — a temporary loan) ; and a 
little further on he spoke to her severely about 
249 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

the parasol she carried; and further yet about 
the strange fashion, specially condemned by the 
Old Testament, in which she wore her hair. 
So Catherine knew in her heart from this that 
she must be looking her very prettiest, and went 
into the rectory radiant. 

The tea was, of course, an awkward meal at 
the best. There was an initial difficulty about 
grace, not easily surmounted. And when the 
Rev. Mr. Dumfarthing sternly refused tea as a 
pernicious drink weakening to the system, the 
Anglican rector was too ignorant of the pres- 
byterian system to know enough to give him 
Scotch whiskey. 

But there were bright spots in the meal as 
well. The rector was even able to ask Cath- 
erine, sideways as a personal question, if she 
played tennis; and she was able to whisper be- 
hind her hand, "Not allowed," and to make a 
face in the direction of her father, who was 
absorbed for the moment in a theological ques- 
tion with Juliana. Indeed, before the conver- 
sation became general again the rector had 
contrived to make a rapid arrangement with 
Catherine whereby she was to come with him 
to the Newberrys' tennis court the day follow- 
ing and learn the game, with or without per- 
mission. 

So the tea was perhaps a success in its way. 
And it is noteworthy that Juliana spent the 
250 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

days that followed it in reading Calvin's "Insti- 
tutes" (specially loaned to her) and "Dum- 
farthing on the Certainty of Damnation" (a 
gift), and in praying for her brother — a task 
practically without hope. During which same 
time the rector in white flannels, and Catherine 
in a white duck skirt and blouse, were flying 
about on the green grass of the Newberrys' 
court, and calling, "love," "love all," to one 
another so gayly and so brazenly that even Mr. 
Newberry felt that there must be something 
in it. 

But all these things came merely as inter- 
ludes in the moving currents of greater events; 
for as the summer faded into autumn and 
autumn into winter the anxieties of the trus- 
tees of St. Asaph's began to call for action 
of some sort. 

"Edward," said the rector's father on the 
occasion of their next quarterly discussion, "I 
cannot conceal from you that the position of 
things is very serious. Your statements show a 
falling off in every direction. Your interest is 
everywhere in arrears; your current account 
overdrawn to the limit. At this rate, you know, 
the end is inevitable. Your debenture and 
bondholders will decide to foreclose; and if 
they do, you know, there is no power that can 
stop them. Even with your limited knowledge 

251 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

of business you are probably aware that there 
is no higher power that can influence or con- 
trol the holder of a first mortgage." 

"I fear so," said the Rev. Edward very sadly. 

"Do you not think perhaps that some of the 
shortcoming lies with yourself?" continued Mr. 
Furlong. "Is it not possible that as a preacher 
you fail somewhat, do not, as it were, deal 
sufficiently with fundamental things as others 
do? You leave untouched the truly vital issues, 
such things as the creation, death, and, if I may 
refer to it, the life beyond the grave." 

As a result of which the Reverend Edward 
preached a series of special sermons on the 
creation, for which he made a special and ardu- 
ous preparation in the library of Plutoria Uni- 
versity. He said that it had taken a million, 
possibly a hundred million, years of quite diffi- 
cult work to accomplish, and that though when 
we looked at it all was darkness still we could 
not be far astray if we accepted and held fast 
to the teachings of Sir Charles Lyell. The 
book of Genesis, he said, was not to be taken 
as meaning a day when it said a day, but rather 
something other than a mere day; and the word 
"light" meant not exactly light, but possibly 
some sort of phosphorescence, and that the use 
of the word "darkness" was to be understood 
not as meaning darkness, but to be taken as 
simply indicating obscurity. And when he had 
252 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

quite finished, tiie congregation declared the 
whole sermon to be mere milk and water. It 
Insulted their intelligence, they said. After 
which, a week later, the Rev. Dr. Dumfarthing 
took up the same subject, and with the aid of 
seven plain texts pulverised the rector into frag- 
ments. 

One notable result of the controversy was 
that Juliana Furlong refused henceforth to at- 
tend her brother's church and sat, even at morn- 
ing service, under the minister of St. Osoph's. 

"The sermon was, I fear, a mistake," said 
Mr. Furlong senior; "perhaps you had better 
not dwell too much on such topics. We must 
look for aid in another direction. In fact, Ed- 
ward, I may mention to you in confidence that 
certain of your trustees are already devising 
ways and means that may help us out of our 
dilemma." 

Indeed, although the Reverend Edward did 
not know It, a certain idea, or plan, was already 
germinating in the minds of the most influential 
supporters of St. Asaph's. 

Such was the situation of the rival churches 
of St. Asaph and St. Osoph as the autumn 
slowly faded into winter: during which time 
the elm trees on Plutoria Avenue shivered and 
dropped their leaves and the chauffeurs of the 
motors first turned blue in their faces and then, 
when the great snows came, were suddenly con- 
253 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

verted into liveried coachmen with tall bear- 
skins and whiskers like Russian horseguards, 
changing back again to blue-nosed chauffeurs 
the very moment of a thaw. During this time 
also the congregation of the Reverend Fare- 
forth Furlong was diminishing month by 
month, and that of the Reverend Uttermust 
Dumfarthing was so numerous that they filled 
up the aisles at the back of the church. Here 
the worshippers stood and froze, for the minis- 
ter had abandoned the use of steam heat in St. 
Osoph's on the ground that he could find no 
warrant for it. 

During this same period other momentous 
things were happening, such as that Juliana 
Furlong was reading, under the immediate 
guidance of Dr. Dumfarthing, the History of 
the Progress of Disruption in the Churches of 
Scotland in ten volumes; such also as that 
Catherine Dumfarthing was wearing a green 
and gold winter suit with Russian furs and a 
Balkan hat and a Circassian feather, which cut 
a wide swath of destruction among the young 
men on Plutoria Avenue every afternoon as she 
passed. Moreover by the strangest of coin- 
cidences she scarcely ever seemed to come along 
the snow-covered avenue without meeting the 
Reverend Edward, — a fact which elicited new 
exclamations of surprise from them both every 
day: and by an equally strange coincidence they 
254 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

generally seemed, although coming In different 
directions, to be bound for the same place; to- 
wards which they wandered together with such 
slow steps and in such oblivion of the passers-by 
that even the children on the avenue knew by 
Instinct whither they were wandering. 

It was noted also that the broken figure of 
Dr. McTeague had reappeared upon the 
street, leaning heavily upon a stick and greeting 
those he met with such a meek and willing 
affability, as If In apology for his stroke of 
paralysis, that all who talked with him agreed 
that McTeague's mind was a wreck. 

"He stood and spoke to me about the chil- 
dren for at least a quarter of an hour," related 
one of his former parishioners, "asking after 
them by name, and whether they were going to 
school yet and a lot of questions like that. He 
never used to speak of such things. Poor old 
McTeague, I'm afraid he is getting soft In the 
head." "I know," said the person addressed. 
"His mind Is no good. He stopped me the 
other day to say how sorry he was to hear about 
my brother's Illness. I could see from the way 
he spoke that his brain Is getting feeble. He's 
losing his grip. He was speaking of how kind 
people had been to him after his accident and 
there were tears In his eyes. I think he's get- 
ting batty." 

Nor were even these things the most mo- 
255 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

mentous happenings of the period. For as win- 
ter slowly changed to early spring it became 
known that something of great portent was 
under way. It was rumoured that the trus- 
tees of St. Asaph's Church were putting their 
heads together. This was striking news. The 
last time that the head of Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, 
for example, had been placed side by side with 
that of Mr. Newberry, there had resulted a 
merger of four soda-water companies, bring- 
ing w^hat was called industrial peace over an 
area as big as Texas and raising the price of 
soda by three peaceful cents per bottle. And 
the last time that Mr. Furlong senior's head 
had been laid side by side with those of Mr. 
Rasselyer-Brown and Mr. Skinyer, they had 
practically saved the country from the horrors 
of a coal famine by the simple process of rais- 
ing the price of nut coal seventy-five cents a ton 
and thus guaranteeing its abundance. 

Naturally, therefore, when it became known 
that such redoubtable heads as those of the 
trustees and the underlying mortgagees of St. 
Asaph's were being put together, it was fully 
expected that some important development 
would follow. It was not accurately known 
from which of the assembled heads first pro- 
ceeded the great idea which was presently to 
solve the difficulties of the church. It may well 
have come from that of Mr. Lucullus Fyshe. 
256 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Certainly a head which had brought peace out 
of civil war in the hardware business by amal- 
gamating ten rival stores and had saved the 
very lives of five hundred employees by reduc- 
ing their wages fourteen per cent, was capable 
of it. 

At any rate it was Mr. Fyshe who first gave 
the idea a definite utterance. 

"It's the only thing, Furlong," he said, across 
the lunch table at the Mausoleum Club. "It's 
the one solution. The two churches can't live 
under the present conditions of competition. 
We have here practically the same situation as 
we had with the two rum distilleries, — the out- 
put is too large for the demand. One or both 
of the two concerns must go under. It's their 
turn just now, but these fellows are business 
men enough to know that it may be ours to- 
morrow. We'll offer them a business solu- 
tion. We'll propose a merger." 

"I've been thinking of it," said Mr. Furlong 
senior, "I suppose it's feasible?" 

"Feasible!" exclaimed Mr. Fyshe. "Why 
look what's being done every day everywhere, 
from the Standard Oil Company downwards." 

"You would hardly, I think," said Mr. Fur- 
long, with a quiet smile, "compare the Standard 
Oil Company to a church?" 

"Well, no, I suppose not," said Mr. Fyshe, 
and he too smiled, — In fact he almost laughed. 
257 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

The notion was cOo ridiculous. One could 
hardly compare a mere church to a thing of 
the magnitude and importance of the Standard 
Oil Company. 

"But on a lesser scale," continued Mr. Fyshe, 
"it's the same sort of thing. As for the diffi- 
culties of it, I needn't remind you of the much 
greater difficulties we had to grapple with in 
the rum merger. There, you remember, a num- 
ber of the women held out as a matter of prin- 
ciple. It was not mere business with them. 
Church union is different. In fact it is one of 
the ideas of the day and everyone admits that 
what is needed is the application of the ordi- 
nary business principles of harmonious com- 
bination, with a proper — er — restriction of out- 
put and general economy of operation." 

"Very good," said Mr. Furlong, "I'm sure 
If you're willing to try, the rest of us are." 

"All right," said Mr. Fyshe. "I thought of 
setting Skinyer, of Skinyer and Beatem, to work 
on the form of the organisation. As you know 
he is not only a deeply religious man but he 
has already handled the Tin Pot Combina- 
tion and the United Hardware and the Asso- 
ciated Tanneries. He ought to find this quite 
simple." 

Within a day or two Mr. Skinyer had a-lready 
commenced his labours. "I must first," he said, 
258 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"get an accurate idea of the existing legal or- 
ganisation of the two churches." 

For which purpose he approached the rector 
of St. Asaph's. 

"I just want to ask you, Mr. Furlong," said 
the lawyer, "a question or two as to the exact 
constitution, the form so to speak, of your 
church. What is it? Is it a single corporate 
body?" 

"I suppose," said the rector thoughtfully, 
"one would define it as an indivisible spiritual 
unit manifesting itself on earth." 

"Quite so," interrupted Mr. Skinyer, "but I 
don't mean what it is in the religious sense: 
I mean, in the real sense." "I fail to under- 
stand," said Mr. Furlong. 

"Let me put it very clearly," said the law- 
yer. "Where does it get its authority?" 

"From above," said the rector reverently. 

"Precisely," said Mr. Skinyer, "no doubt, but 
I mean its authority in the exact sense of the 
term." 

"It was enjoined on St. Peter," began the 
rector, but Mr. Skinyer interrupted him. 

"That I am aware of," he said, "but what 
I mean is, — where does your church get its 
power, for example, to hold property, to col- 
lect debts, to use distraint against the prop- 
erty of others, to foreclose its mortgages and 
to cause judgment to be executed against those 
259 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

who fail to pay their debts to it? You will 
say at once that it has these powers direct 
from Heaven. No doubt that is true and no 
religious person v/ould deny it. But we law- 
yers are compelled to take a narrower, a less 
elevating point of view. Are these powers 
conferred on you by the state legislature or 
by some higher authority?" 

"Oh by a higher authority, I hope," said 
the rector very fervently. Whereupon Mr. 
Skinyer left him without further questioning, 
the rector's brain being evidently unfit for the 
subject of corporation law. 

On the other hand he got satisfaction from 
the Rev. Dr. Dumfarthing at once. 

"The church of St. Osoph," said the min- 
ister, "is a perpetual trust, holding property 
as such under a general law of the state and 
able as such to be made the object of suit or 
distraint. I speak with some assurance as I 
had occasion to enquire into the matter at 
the time when I was looking for guidance in 
regard to the call I had received to come 
here." 

"It's a quite simple matter," Mr. Skinyer 
presently reported to Mr. Fyshe. "One of the 
churches is a perpetual trust, the other prac- 
tically a state corporation. Each has full con- 
trol over its property provided nothing is done 
260 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

by either to infringe the purity of its doc- 
trine." 

"Just what does that mean?" asked Mr. 
Fyshe. 

"It must maintain its doctrine absolutely 
pure. Otherwise if certain of its trustees re- 
main pure and the rest do not, those who stay 
pure are entitled to take the whole of the prop- 
erty. This, I believe, happens every day in, 
Scotland where, of course, there is great 
eagerness to remain pure in doctrine." 

"And what do you define as pure doctrine?'* 
asked Mr. Fyshe. 

"If the trustees are in dispute," said Mr. 
Skinyer, "the courts decide, but any doctrine 
is held to be a pure doctrine if all the trustees 
regard it as a pure doctrine." 

"I see," said Mr. Fyshe thoughtfully, "it's 
the same thing as what we called 'permissible 
policy' on the part of directors in the Tin Pot 
Combination." 

"Exactly," assented Mr. Skinyer, "and it 
means that for the merger we need nothing, — I 
state it very frankly, — except general consent. 

The preliminary stages of the making of 
the merger followed along familiar business 
lines. The trustees of St. Asaph's went 
through the process known as 'approaching' 
the trustees of St. Osoph's. First of all, for 
261 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

example, Mr. Lucullus Fyshe invited Mr. As- 
modeus Boulder of St. Osoph's to lunch with 
him at the Mausoleum Club; the cost of the 
lunch, as is usual in such cases, was charged 
to the general expense account of the church. 
Of course nothing whatever was said during the 
lunch about the churches or their finances or 
anything concerning them. Such discussion 
would have been a gross business impropriety. 
A few days later the two brothers Overend 
dined with Mr. Furlong senior, the dinner 
being charged directly to the contingencies 
account of St. Asaph's. After which Mr. 
Skinyer and his' partner, Mr. Beatem, went to 
the spring races together on the Profit and Loss 
account of St. Osoph's, and Philippa Overend 
and Catherine Dumfarthing were taken (by 
the Unforeseen Disbursements Account) to the 
grand opera, followed by a midnight supper. 
All of these things constituted what was 
called the promotion of the merger and were 
almost exactly identical with the successive 
stages of the making of the Amalgamated Dis- 
tilleries and the Associated Tin Pot Corpora- 
tion; which was considered a most hopeful 
sign. 

"Do you think they'll go into it?" asked Mr. 
Newberry of Mr. Furlong senior, anxiously. 
*'After all, what inducement have they?" 
262 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"Every inducement," said Mr. Furlong. "All 
said and done they've only one large asset, — 
Dr. Dumfarthing. We're really offering to 
buy up Dr. Dumfarthing by pooling our assets 
with theirs." 

"And what does Dr. Dumfarthing himself 
say to it?" 

"Ah, there I am not so sure," said Mr. Fur- 
long; "that may be a difficulty. So far there 
hasn't been a word from him, and his trus- 
tees are absolutely silent about his views. How- 
ever, we shall soon know all about it. Skin- 
yer is asking us all to come together one even- 
ing next week to draw up the articles of agree- 
ment." 

"Has he got the financial basis arranged 
then?" 

"I believe so," said Mr. Furlong. "His idea 
is to form a new corporation to be known as 
the United Church Limited or by some simi- 
lar name. All the present mortgagees will be 
converted into unified bondholders, the pew 
rents will be capitalised into preferred stock 
and the common stock, drawing its dividend 
from the offertory, will be distributed among 
all members in standing. Skinyer says that 
it is really an ideal form of church union, 
one that he thinks is likely to be widely adopted. 
It has the advantages of removing all ques- 
tions of religion, which he says are practically 
263 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

the only remaining obstacle to a union of all 
the churches. In fact it puts the churches once 
and for all on a business basis." 

"But what about the question of doctrine, of 
belief?" asked Mr. Newberry. 

"Skinyer says he can settle it," answered 
Mr. Furlong. 

About a week after the above conversation 
the united trustees of St. Asaph's and St. 
Osoph's were gathered about a huge egg-shaped 
table in the board room of the Mausoleum 
Club. They were seated in intermingled fashion 
after the precedent of the recent Tin Pot Amal- 
gamation and were smoking huge black cigars 
specially kept by the club for the promotion of 
companies and chargeable to expenses of or- 
ganisation at fifty cents a cigar. There was an 
air of deep peace brooding over the assembly, 
as among men who have accomplished a diffi- 
cult and meritorious task. 

"Well, then," said Mr. Skinyer, who was in 
the chair, with a pile of documents in front 
of him, "I think that our general basis of 
financial union may be viewed as settled." 

A murmur of assent went round the meeting. 

"The terms are set forth in the memorandum 

before us, which you have already signed. Only 

one other point, — a minor one, — remains to be 

264 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

considered. I refer to the doctrines or the 
religious belief of the new amalgamation." 

"Is it necessary to go Into that?" asked Mr. 
Boulder. 

"Not entirely, perhaps," said Mr. Skinyer. 
"Still there have been, as you all know, cer- 
tain points, — I won't say of disagreement, — 
but let us say of friendly argument, — between 
the members of the different churches, — such 
things, for example," here he consulted his 
papers, "as the theory of the creation, the sal- 
vation of the soul, and so forth, have been 
mentioned in this connection. I have a memo- 
randum of them here, though the points escape 
me for the moment. These, you may say, are 
not matters of first Importance, especially as 
compared with the Intricate financial questions 
which we have already settled in a satisfactory 
manner. Still I think It might be well if I 
were permitted with your unanimous approval 
to jot down a memorandum or two to be after- 
wards embodied In our articles." 

There was a general murmur of approval. 

"Very good," said Mr. Skinyer, settling him- 
self back In his chair. "Now, first, in regard 
to the creation," here he looked all round the 
meeting in a way to command attention, — "Is 
it your wish that we should leave that merely 
to a gentlemen's agreement or do you want 
an explicit clause?" 

265 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"I think it might be well," said Mr. Dick 
Overend, "to leave no doubt about the theory 
of the creation." 

"Good," said Mr. Skinyer. "I am going 
to put it down then something after this fashion : 
'On and after, let us say, August ist proximo, 
the process of the creation shall be held, and 
is hereby held, to be such and such only as 
is acceptable to a majority of the holders of 
common and preferred stock voting pro rata. 
Is that agreed?" 

"Carried," cried several at once. 

"Carried," repeated Mr. Skinyer. "Now let 
us pass on," — here he consulted his notes, — "to 
item two, eternal punishment. I have made a 
memorandum as follows, 'Should any doubts 
arise, on or after August first proximo, as to 
the existence of eternal punishment they shall 
be settled absolutely and finally by a pro rata 
vote of all the holders of common and pre- 
ferred stock.' Is that agreed?" 

"One moment!" said Mr. Fyshe, "do you 
think that quite fair to the bondholders ? After 
all, as the virtual holders of the property, they 
are the persons most interested. I should like 
to amend your clause and make it read, — I am 
not phrasing it exactly but merely giving the 
sense of it, — that eternal punishment should 
be reserved for the mortgagees and bond- 
holders." 

266 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

At this there was an outbreak of mingled 
approval and dissent, several persons speaking 
at once. In the opinion of some, the stock- 
holders of the company, especially the pre- 
ferred stockholders, had as good a right to 
eternal punishment as the bondholders. Pres- 
ently Mr. Skinyer, who had been busily writing 
notes, held up his hand for silence. 

"Gentlemen," he said, "will you accept this 
as a compromise? We will keep the original 
clause but merely add to it the words, 'but no 
form of eternal punishment shall be declared 
valid if displeasing to a three-fifths majority 
of the holders of bonds.' " 

"Carried, carried," cried everybody. 

"To which I think we need only add," said 
Mr. Skinyer, "a clause to the effect that all 
other points of doctrine, belief or religious 
principle may be freely altered, amended, re- 
versed or entirely aboHshed at any general 
annual meeting!" 

There was a renewed chorus of "Carried, 
carried," and the trustees rose from the table 
shaking hands with one another, and lighting 
fresh cigars as they passed out of the club into 
the night air. 

"The only thing that I don't understand," 

said Mr. Newberry to Dr. Boomer as they 

went out from the club arm in arm (for they 

might now walk in that fashion with the same 

267 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

propriety as two of the principals in a distillery 
merger), "the only thing that I don't under- 
stand is why the Reverend Mr. Dumfarthing 
should be willing to consent to the amalga- 
mation." 

"Do you really not know?" said Dr. Boomer. 

"No." 

"You have heard nothing?" 

"Not a word," said Mr. Newberry. 

"Ah," rejoined the president, "I see that our 
men have kept it very quiet, — naturally so. In 
view of the circumstances. The truth is that 
the Reverend Mr. Dumfarthing is leaving us." 

"Leaving St. Osoph'sl" exclaimed Mr. New- 
berry in utter astonishment. 

"To our great regret. He has had a call, — 
a most inviting field of work, he says, a splen- 
did opportunity. They offered him ten thou- 
sand one hundred; we were only giving him 
ten thousand here, though of course that fea- 
ture of the situation would not weigh at all 
with a man like Dumfarthing." 

"Oh no, of course not," said Mr. New- 
berry. 

"As soon as we heard of the call we offered 
him ten thousand three hundred, — not that that 
would make any difference to a man of his 
character. Indeed Dumfarthing was still wait- 
ing and looking for guidance when they offered 
him eleven thousand. We couldn't meet it. 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

It was beyond us, though we had the consola- 
tion of knowing that with such a man as Dum- 
farthing the money made no difference." 

"And he has accepted the call?" 

"Yes. He accepted it to-day. He sent word 
to Mr. Dick Overend, our chairman, that 
he would remain in his manse, looking for 
light, until two thirty, after which, if we had 
not communicated with him by that hour, he 
would cease to look for it." 

"Dear me," said Mr. Newberry, deep In 
reflection, "so that when your trustees came 
to the meeting " 

"Exactly," said Dr. Boomer, — and some- 
thing like a smile passed across his features for 
a moment, — "Dr. Dumfarthing had already 
sent away his telegram of acceptance." 

"Why, then," said Mr. Newberry, "at the 
time of our discussion to-night, you were in the 
position of having no minister." 

"Not at all. We had already appointed a 
successor." 

"A successor?" 

"Certainly. It will be In to-morrow morn- 
ing's papers. The fact Is that we decided to 
ask Dr. McTeague to resume his charge. 

"Dr. McTeague!" repeated Mr. Newberry 
In amazement. "But surely his mind is under- 
stood to be " 

"Oh, not at all," Interrupted Dr. Boomer. 
269 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle liich 

"His mind appears, if anything, to be clearer 
and stronger than ever. Dr. Slyder tells us 
that paralysis of the brain very frequently has 
this effect; It soothes the brain, — clears it, as 
it were, so that very often intellectual prob- 
lems which occasioned the greatest perplexity 
before present no difficulty whatever after- 
ward. Dr. McTeague, I believe, finds no 
trouble now in reconciling St. Paul's dialectic 
with Hegel as he used to. He saysi that so 
far as he can see they both mean the same 
thing." 

"Well, well," said Mr. Newberry, "and will 
Dr. McTeague also resume his philosophical 
lectures at the university?" 

"We think it wiser not," said the president. 
"While we feel that Dr. McTeague's mind 
is in admirable condition for clerical work we 
fear that professorial duties might strain it. 
In order to get the full value of his remark- 
able intelligence, we propose to elect him to 
the governing body of the university. There 
his brain will be safe from any shock. As a 
professor there would always be the fear that 
one of his students might raise a question in 
his class. This of course is not a difficulty that 
arises in the pulpit or among the governors of 
the university." 

"Of course not," said Mr. Newberry. 



270 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Thus was constituted the famous union or 
merger of the churches of St. Asaph and St. 
Osoph, viewed by many of those who made it 
as the beginning of a new era in the history 
of the modern church. 

There is no doubt that it has been in every 
way an eminent success. 

Rivalry, competition and controversies over 
points of dogma have become unknown on Plu- 
toria Avenue. The parishioners of the two 
churches may now attend either of them just as 
they Hke. As the trustees are fond of explaining 
it doesn't make the slightest difference. The en- 
tire receipts of the churches being now pooled 
are divided without reference to individual at- 
tendance. At each half year there is issued a 
printed statement which is addressed to the 
shareholders of the United Churches Limited 
and is hardly to be distinguished in style or 
material from the annual and semi-annual re- 
ports of the Tin Pot Amalgamation and the 
United Hardware and other quasi-religious 
bodies of the sort. "Your directors," the last 
of these documents states, "are happy to in- 
form you that in spite of the prevailing indus- 
trial depression the gross receipts of the cor- 
poration have shown such an increase as to 
justify the distribution of a stock dividend of 
special Offertory Stock Cumulative, which will 
be offered at par to all holders of common or 
271 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

preferred shares. You will also be gratified 
to learn that the directors have voted unani- 
mously in favour of a special presentation to 
the Rev. Uttermust Dumfarthing on the occa- 
sion of his approaching marriage. It was 
earnestly debated whether this gift should take 
the form, as at first suggested, of a cash pre- 
sentation, or, as afterwards suggested, of a 
written testimonial in the form of an address. 
The latter course was finally adopted as being 
more fitting to the circumstances and the ad- 
dress has accordingly been prepared, setting 
forth to the Rev. Dr. Dumfarthing, in old 
English lettering and wording, the opinion 
which is held of him by his former parish- 
ioners." 

The "approaching marriage" referred of 
course to Dr. Dumfarthing's betrothal to 
Juliana Furlong. It was not known that he 
had ever exactly proposed to her. But it was 
understood that before giving up his charge 
he drew her attention, in very severe terms, 
to the fact that, as his daughter was now leav- 
ing him, he must either have someone else to 
look after his manse or else be compelled to 
incur the expense of a paid housekeeper. This 
latter alternative, he said, was not one that he 
cared to contemplate. He also reminded her 
that she was now at a time of life when she 
could hardly expect to pick and choose and 
272 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 



that her spiritual condition was one of at least 
great uncertainty. These combined statements 
are held, under the law of Scotland at any rate, 
to be equivalent to an offer of marriage. 

Catherine Dumfarthing did not join her 
father in his new manse. She first remained 
behind him, as the guest of Philippa Overend 
for a few weeks while she was occupied in 
packing up her things. After that she stayed 
for another two or three weeks to unpack them. 
This had been rendered necessary by a con- 
versation held with the Reverend Edward 
Fareforth Furlong, in a shaded corner of the 
Overends' garden. After which, in due course 
of time, Catherine and Edward were married, 
the ceremony being performed by the Reverend 
Dr. McTeague, whose eyes filled with philo- 
sophical tears as he gave them his blessing. 

So the two churches of St. Asaph and St. 
Osoph stand side by side united and at peace. 
Their bells call softly back and forward to 
one another on Sunday mornings and such is 
the harmony between them that even the epis- 
copal rooks in the elm trees of St. Asaph's and 
the presbyterian crows in the spruce trees of 
St. Osoph's are known to exchange perches on 
alternate Sundays. 



273 



Chapter VIII.— The Great Fight for Clean 
Government 



AS to the government of this city," said 
Mr. Newberry, leaning back in a 
leather arm-chair at the Mausoleum 
Club and lighting a second cigar, "it's 
rotten, that's all." 

"Absolutely rotten," assented Mr. Dick 
Overend, ringing the bell for a second whiskey 
and soda. 

"Corrupt," said Mr. Newberry, between two 
puffs of his cigar. 

"Full of graft," said Mr. Overend, flicking 
his ashes into the grate. 

"Crooked aldermen," said Mr. Newberry. 

"A bum city solicitor," said Mr. Overend, 
"and an infernal grafter for treasurer." 

"Yes," assented Mr. Newberry, and then, 
leaning forward In his chair and looking care- 
fully about the corridors of the club, he spoke 
behind his hand and said, "And the mayor's 
the biggest grafter of the lot. And what's 
more," he added, sinking his voice to a whisper, 
"the time has come to speak out about it fear- 
lessly." 

Mr. Overend nodded. "It's a tyranny," he 
said. 

274 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"Worse than Russia," rejoined Mr. New- 
berry. 

They had been sitting in a quiet corner of 
the club — it was on a Sunday evening — and 
had fallen into talking, first of all, of the pres- 
ent rottenness of the federal politics of the 
United States, — not argumentatively or with 
any heat, but with the reflective sadness that 
steals over an elderly man when he sits In the 
leather arm-chair of a comfortable club smoking 
a good cigar and musing on the decadence of 
the present day. The rottenness of the federal 
government didn't anger them. It merely 
grieved them. 

They could remember, — both of them, — how 
different everything was when they were young 
men just entering on life. When Mr. New- 
berry and Mr. Dick Overend were young, men 
went Into congress from pure patriotism; there 
was no such thing as graft or crookedness, as 
they both admitted, in those days; and as for 
the United States Senate — here their voices 
were almost hushed in awe — why, when they 
were young, the United States Senate, 

But no, neither of them could find a phrase 
big enough for their meaning. 

They merely repeated "as for the United 
States Senate" — and then shook their heads and 
took long drinks of whiskey and soda. 
275 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Then, naturally, speaking of the rottenness 
of the federal government had led them to 
talk of the rottenness of the state legislature. 
How different from the state legislatures that 
they remembered as young men 1 Not merely 
different in the matter of graft, but different, 
so Mr. Newberry said, in the calibre of the 
men. He recalled how he had been taken as 
a boy of twelve by his father to hear a debate. 
He would never forget it. Giants! he said, 
that was what they were. In fact, the thing was 
more like a Witenagemot than a legislature. 
He said he distinctly recalled a man, whose 
name he didn't recollect, speaking on a ques- 
tion, he didn't just remember what, either for 
or against he couldn't just recall which; it 
thrilled him. He would never forget it. It 
stayed in his memory as if it were yesterday. 

But as for the present legislature, — here Mr. 
Dick Overend sadly nodded assent in advance 
to what he knew was coming — as for the pres- 
ent legislature — well, — Mr. Newberry had had, 
he said, occasion to visit the state capital a 
week before in connection with a railway bill 
that he was trying to, — that is, that he was 
anxious to, — in short in connection with a rail- 
way bill, and when he looked about him at the 
men in the legislature, — positively he felt 
ashamed; he could put it no other way than 
that, — ashamed. 

276 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

After which, from speaking of the crooked- 
ness of the state government Mr. Newberry 
and Mr. Dick Overend were led to talk of the 
crookedness of the city government! And they 
both agreed, as above, that things were worse 
than in Russia. What secretly irritated them 
both most was that they had lived and done 
business under this infernal corruption for 
thirty or forty years and hadn't noticed it. They 
had been too busy. 

The fact was that their conversation re- 
flected not so much their own original ideas 
as a general wave of feeling that was passing 
over the whole community. 

There had come a moment, — quite suddenly 
it seemed, — when it occurred to everybody at 
the same time that the whole government of 
the city was rotten. The word is a strong one. 
But it is the one that was used. Look at the 
aldermen, they said, — rotten ! Look at the city 
solicitor, rotten! And as for the mayor him- 
self, — phew ! 

The thing came like a wave. Everybody felt 
it at once. People wondered how any sane, 
intelligent community could tolerate the pres- 
ence of a set of corrupt scoundrels like the 
twenty aldermen of the city. Their names, it 
was said, were simply a byword throughout 
the United States for rank criminal corruption. 
This was said so widely that everybody started 
277 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

hunting through the daily papers to try to find 
out who In blazes were aldermen, anyhow. 
Twenty names are hard to remember, and as a 
matter of fact, at the moment when this wave 
of feeling struck the city, nobody knew or cared 
who were aldermen, anyway. 

To tell the truth, the aldermen had been 
much the same persons for about fifteen or 
twenty years. Some were In the produce busi- 
ness, others were butchers, two were grocers, 
and all of them wore blue checkered waist- 
coats and red ties and got up at seven in the 
morning to attend the vegetable and other 
markets. Nobody had ever really thought 
about them, — that Is to say, nobody on Plu- 
torla Avenue. Sometimes one saw a picture 
In the paper and wondered for a moment who 
the person was; but on looking more closely 
and noticing what was written under it, one 
said, "Oh, I see, an alderman," and turned to 
something else. 

"Whose funeral is that?" a man would some- 
times ask on Plutoria Avenue. "Oh, just one 
of the city aldermen," a passer-by would an- 
swer hurriedly. "Oh I see, I beg your pardon, 
I thought It might be somebody important." 

At which both laughed. 

It was not just clear how and where this 
movement of indignation had started. People 
278 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

said that It was part of a new wave of public 
morality that was sweeping over the entire 
United States. Certainly it was being remarked 
in almost every section of the country, Chicago 
newspapers were attributing its origin to the 
new vigour and the fresh ideals of the middle 
west. In Boston it was said to be due to a 
revival of the grand old New England spirit. 
In Philadelphia they called it the spirit of 
William Penn. In the south It was said to be 
the reassertion of southern chivalry making 
Itself felt against the greed and selfishness of 
the north, while in the north they recognised 
It at once as a protest against the sluggishness 
and ignorance of the south. In the west they 
spoke of it as a revolt against the spirit of 
the east and in the east they called it a reaction 
against the lawlessness of the west. But every- 
where they hailed it as a new sign of the glor- 
ious unity of the country. 

If therefore Mr. Newberry and Mr. Over- 
end were found to be discussing the corrupt 
state of their city they only shared in the na- 
tional sentiments of the moment. In fact in 
the same city hundreds of other citizens, as 
disinterested as themselves, were waking up 
to the realisation of what was going on. As 
soon as people began to look Into the condi- 
tion of things In the city they were horrified 
at what they found. It was discovered, for 
279 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

example, that Alderman Schwefeldampf was 
an undertaker! Think of Itl In a city with 
a hundred and fifty deaths a week, and some- 
times even better, an undertaker sat on the 
council 1 A city that was about to expropriate 
land and to spend four hundred thousand dol- 
lars for a new cemetery, had an undertaker 
on the expropriation committee itself ! And 
worse than that! Alderman Undercutt was a 
butcher! In a city that consumed a thousand 
tons of meat every week! And Alderman 
O'Hooligan — it leaked out — was an Irishman ! 
Imagine it! ,An Irishman sitting on the police 
committee of the council in a city where thirty- 
eight and a half out of every hundred police- 
men were Irish, either by birth or parentage! 
The thing was monstrous. 

So when Mr. Newberry said "It's worse than 
Russia!" he meant it, every word. 

Now just as Mr. Newberry and Mr. Dick 
Overend were finishing their discussion, the 
hugh bulky form of Mayor McGrath came 
ponderously past them as they sat. He looked 
at them sideways out of his eyes, — he had eyes 
like plums in a mottled face, — and, being a 
born politician, he knew by the very look of 
them that they were talking of something that 
they had no business to be talking about. But, 
— being a politician, — he merely said, "Good 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

evening, gentlemen," without a sign of disturb- 
ance. 

"Good evening, Mr. Mayor," said Mr. 
Newberry, rubbing his hands feebly together 
and speaking in an ingratiating tone. There 
is no more pitiable spectacle than an honest 
man caught in the act of speaking boldly and 
fearlessly of the evil-doer. 

"Good evening, Mr. Mayor," echoed Mr. 
Dick Overend, also rubbing his hands; "warm 
evening, is it not?" 

The mayor gave no other answer than that 
deep guttural grunt which is technically known 
in municipal interviews as refusing to commit 
oneself. 

"Did he hear?" whispered Mr. Newberry 
as the mayor passed out of the club. 

"I don't care if he did," whispered Mr. Dick 
Overend. 

Half an hour later Mayor McGrath entered 
the premises of the Thomas Jefferson Club, 
which were situated in the rear end of a saloon 
and pool room far down in the town. 

"Boys," he said to Alderman O'Hooligan 
and Alderman Gorfinkel, who were playing 
freeze-out poker in a corner behind the pool 
tables, "you want to let the boys know to keep 
pretty dark and go easy. There's a lot of talk 
I don't like about the elections going round the 

38X 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

town. Let the boys know that just for a while 
the darker they keep the better." 

Whereupon the word was passed from the 
Thomas Jefferson Club to the George Wash- 
ington Club and thence to the Eureka Club 
(coloured), and to the Kossuth Club (Hun- 
garian), and to various other centres of civic 
patriotism in the lower parts of the city. And 
forthwith such a darkness began to spread over 
them that not even honest Diogenes with his 
lantern could have penetrated their doings. 

"If them stiffs wants to make trouble," said 
the president of the George Washington Club 
to Mayor McGrath a day or two later, "they 
won't never know what they've bumped up 
against." 

"Well," said the heavy mayor, speaking 
slowly and cautiously and eyeing his henchman 
with quiet scrutiny, "you want to go pretty easy 
now, I tell you." 

The look which the mayor directed at his 
satellite was much the same glance that Mor- 
gan the buccaneer might have given to one 
of his lieutenants before throwing him over- 
board. 

Meantime the wave of civic enthusiasm as 
reflected in the conversations of Plutoria Ave- 
nue grew stronger with every day. 

"The thing is a scandal," said Mr. LucuUus 
282 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Fyshe. "Why, these fellows down at the city 
hall are simply a pack of rogues. I had occa- 
sion to do some business there the other day 
(it was connected with the assessment of our 
soda factories) and do you know, I actually 
found that these fellows take money!" 

"I say!" said Mr. Peter Spillikins, to whom 
he spoke, "I say! You don't say!" 

"It's a fact," repeated Mr. Fyshe. "They 
take money. I took the assistant treasurer aside 
and I said, 'I want such and such done,' and I 
slipped a fifty dollar bill into his hand. And 
the fellow took it, took it like a shot." 

"He took it!" gasped Mr. Spillikins. 

"He did," said Mr. Fyshe. "There ought 
to be a criminal law for that sort of thing." 

"I say!" exclaimed Mr. Spillikins, "they 
ought to go to jail for a thing like that." 

"And the infernal insolence of them," Mr. 
Fyshe continued. "I went down the next day 
to see the deputy assistant (about a thing con- 
nected with the same matter) , told him what I 
wanted and passed a fifty dollar bill across 
the counter and the fellow fairly threw it back 
at me, in a perfect rage. He refused it!" 

"Refused it," gasped Mr. Spillikins, "I say!" 

Conversations such as this filled up the leisure 
and divided the business time of all the best 
people in the city. 

283 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

In the general gloomy outlook, however, one 
bright spot was observable. The "wave" had 
evidently come just at the opportune moment. 
For not only were civic elections pending but 
just at this juncture four or five questions of 
supreme importance would have to be settled 
by the incoming council. There was, for in- 
stance, the question of the expropriation of the 
Traction Company (a matter involving many 
millions) ; there was the decision as to the re- 
newal of the franchise of the Citizens' Light 
Company, — a vital question; there was also 
the four hundred thousand dollar purchase of 
land for the new addition to the cemetery, a 
matter that must be settled. And it was felt, 
especially on Plutoria Avenue, to be a splendid 
thing that the city was waking up, in the moral 
sense, at the very time when these things were 
under discussion. All the shareholders of the 
Traction Company and the Citizens' Light, — 
and they included the very best, the most high- 
minded, people in the city, — felt that what was 
needed now was a great moral effort, to enable 
them to lift the city up and carry It with them, 
or, if not all of it, at any rate as much of it 
as they could. 

"It's a splendid movement 1" said Mr. Fyshc 
(he was a leading shareholder and director of 
the Citizens' Light), "what a splendid thing to 
284 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

think that we shan't have to deal for our new 
franchise with a set of corrupt rapscallions like 
these present aldermen. Do you know, Fur- 
long, that when we approached them first with 
a proposition for a renewal for a hundred and 
fifty years they held us up! Said it was too 
long! Imagine that! A hundred and fifty 
years (only a century and a half) too long for 
the franchise! They expect us to instal all 
our poles, string our wires, set up our trans- 
formers in their streets and then perhaps at 
the end of a hundred years find ouselves com- 
pelled to sell out at a beggarly valuation. Of 
course we knew what they wanted. They meant 
us to hand them over fifty dollars each to stuff 
into their rascally pockets." 

"Outrageous!" said Mr. Furlong. 

"And the same thing with the cemetery land 
deal," went on Mr. Lucullus Fyshe. "Do you 
realise that, if the movement hadn't come along 
and checked them, those scoundrels would have 
given that rogue Schwefeldampf four hundred 
thousand dollars for his fifty acres ! Just think 
of it!" 

"I don't know," said Mr. Furlong with a 
thoughtful look upon his face, "that four hun- 
dred thousand dollars is an excessive price, in 
and of itself, for that amount of land." 

"Certainly not," said Mr. Fyshe, very quietly 
and decidedly, looking at Mr. Furlong in a 
28s 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

searching way as he spoke. "It is not a high 
price. It seems to me, speaking purely as an 
outsider, a very fair, reasonable price for fifty 
acres of suburban land, if it were the right 
land. If, for example, it were a case of making 
an offer for that very fine stretch of land, about 
twenty acres, is it not, which I believe your 
Corporation owns on the other side of the 
cemetery, I should say four hundred thousand 
Is a most modest price." 

Mr. Furlong nodded his head reflectively. 

"You had thought, had you not, of offer- 
ing it to the city?" said Mr. Fyshe. 

"We did," said Mr. Furlong, "at a more 
or less nominal sum, — four hundred thousand 
or whatever it might be. We felt that for such 
a purpose, almost sacred as it were, one would 
want as little bargaining as possible." 

"Oh, none at all," assented Mr. Fyshe. 

"Our feeling was," went on Mr. Furlong, 
"that if the city wanted our land for the ceme- 
tery extension, it might have it at its own figure, 
— four hundred thousand, half a million, in 
fact at absolutely any price, from four hundred 
thousand up, that they cared to put on it. We 
didn't regard it as a commercial transaction at 
all. Our reward lay merely In the fact of sell- 
ing it to them." 

"Exactly," said Mr. Fyshe, "and of course 
your land was more desirable from every point 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

of view. Schwefeldampf's ground is encum- 
bered with a growth of cypress and evergreens 
and weeping willows which make it quite un- 
suitable for an up-to-date cemetery; whereas 
yours, as I remember it, is bright and open, — 
a loose sandy soil with no trees and very little 
grass to overcome," 

"Yes," said Mr. Furlong. "We thought too, 
that our ground, having the tanneries and the 
chemical factory along the further side of it, 
was an ideal place for, " he paused, seek- 
ing a mode of expressing his thought. 

"For the dead," said Mr. Fyshe, with be- 
coming reverence. 

And after this conversation Mr. Fyshe and 
Mr. Furlong senior understood one another 
absolutely in regard to the new movement. 

It was astonishing in fact how rapidly the 
light spread. 

"Is Rasselyer-Brown with us?" asked some 
one of Mr. Fyshe a few days later. 

"Heart and soul," answered Mr. Fyshe. 
"He's very bitter over the way these rascals 
have been plundering the city on its coal sup- 
ply. He says that the city has been buying coal 
wholesale at the pit mouth at three fifty, — 
utterly worthless stuff, he tells me. He has 
heard it said that everyone of these scoundrels 
has been paid from twenty-five to fifty dollars 
a winter to connive at it." 
287 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"Dear me," said the listener. 

"Abominable, is it not?" said Mr. Fyshe. 
"But as I said to Rasselyer-Brown, what can 
one do if the citizens themselves take no inter- 
est in these things. 'Take your own case,' I 
said to him, 'how is it that you, a coal man, are 
not helping the city in this matter? Why don't 
you supply the city?' He shook his head, 'I 
wouldn't do it at three fifty,' he said. 'No,' I 
answered, 'but will you at five?' He looked 
at me for a moment and then he said, 'Fyshe, 
I'll do it; at five, or at anything over that they 
like to name. If we get a new council in they 
may name their own figure.' 'Good,' I said. 
'I hope all the other business men will be ani- 
mated with the same spirit.' " 

Thus it was that the light broke and spread 
and illuminated in all directions. People began 
to realise the needs of the city as they never 
had before. Mr. Boulder, who owned, among 
other things, a stone quarry and an asphalt 
company, felt that the paving of the streets 
was a disgrace. Mr. Skinyer, of Skinyer and 
Beatem, shook his head and said that the whole 
legal department of the city needed reorganisa- 
tion; it needed, he said, new blood. But he 
added always in a despairing tone, how could 
one expect to run a department with the head 
of it drawing only six thousand dollars; the 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

thing was Impossible. If, he argued, they could 
superannuate the present chief solicitor and get 
a man, a ^ood man (Mr. Sklnyer laid em- 
phasis on this) at, say, fifteen thousand, there 
might be some hope, 

"Of course," said Mr. Sklnyer to Mr. New- 
berry in discussing the topic, "one would need 
to give him a proper staff of assistants so as 
to take off his hands all the routine work, — the 
mere appearance in court, the preparation of 
briefs, the office consultation, the tax revision 
and the purely legal work. In that case he 
would have his hands free to devote himself en- 
tirely to those things, which, — in fact to turn 
his attention in whatever direction he might 
feel it was advisable to turn it. 

Within a week or two the public movement 
had found definite expression and embodied 
itself In the Clean Government Association. 
This was organised by a group of leading and 
disinterested citizens who held their first meet- 
ing In the largest upstairs room of the Mauso- 
leum Club. Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, Mr. Boulder, 
and others keenly Interested In obtaining sim- 
ply justice for the stockholders of the Traction 
and the Citizens' Light were prominent from 
the start. Mr. Rasselyer-Brown, Mr. Furlong 
senior and others were there, not from special 
interest in the light or traction questions, but^ 
289 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

as they said themselves, from pure civic spirit. 
Dr. Boomer was there to represent the univer- 
sity with three of his most presentable pro- 
fessors, cultivated men who were able to sit 
in a first class club and drink, whiskey and soda 
and talk as well as any business man present. 
Mr. Skinyer, Mr. Beatem and others repre- 
sented the bar. Dr. McTeague, blinking in the 
blue tobacco smoke, was there to stand for the 
church. There were all-round enthusiasts as 
well, such as Mr. Newberry and the Overend 
brothers and Mr. Peter Spillikins. 

"Isn't it fine," whispered Mr. Spillikins to 
Mr. Newberry, "to see a set of men like these 
all going into a thing like this, not thinking 
of their own interests a bit?" 

Mr. Fyshe, as chairman, addressed the meet- 
ing. He told them they were there to initiate 
a great free voluntary movement of the people. 
It had been thought wise, he said, to hold it 
with closed doors and to keep it out of the 
newspapers. This would guarantee the league 
against the old underhand control by a clique 
that had hitherto disgraced every part of the 
administration of the city. He wanted, he said, 
to see everything done henceforth in broad day 
light: and for this purpose he had summoned 
them there at night to discuss ways and means 
of action. After they were once fully assured of 
exactly what they wanted to do and how they 
290 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

meant to do it, the league, he said, would in- 
vite the fullest and freest advice from all classes 
in the city. There were none, he said, amid 
great applause, that were so lowly that they 
would not be Invited, — once the platform of the 
league was settled, — to advise and co-operate. 
All might help, even the poorest. Subscrip- 
tion lists would be prepared which would allow 
any sum at all, from one to five dollars, to be 
given to the treasurer. The league was to be 
democratic or nothing. The poorest might con- 
tribute as little as one dollar: even the richest 
would not be allowed to give more than five. 
Moreover he gave notice that he Intended to 
propose that no actual official of the league 
should be allowed under Its by-laws to give any- 
thing. He himself, — If they did him the hon- 
our to make him president as he had heard It 
hinted was their Intention, — would be the first 
to bow to this rule. He would efface himself. 
He would obhterate himself, content In the 
interests of all, to give nothing. He was able 
to announce similar pledges from his friends, 
Mr. Boulder, Mr. Furlong, Dr. Boomer and a 
number of others. 

Quite a storm of applause greeted these re- 
marks by Mr. Fyshe, who flushed with pride 
as he heard It. 

"Now, gentlemen," he went on, "this meet- 
ing Is open for discussion. Remember It is 
291 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

quite informal, anyone may speak. I as chair- 
man make no claim to control or monopolise 
the discussion. Let everyone understand " 

"Well then, Mr. Chairman," began Mr. Dick 
Overend. 

"One minute, Mr. Overend," said Mr. Fyshe. 
"I want everyone to understand that he may 
speak as " 

"May I say then " began Mr. New- 
berry. 

"Pardon me, Mr. Newberry," said Mr. 
Fyshe, "I was wishing first to explain that 
not only may all participate but that we in- 
vite " 

"In that case " began Mr. Newberry. 

"Before you speak, ".interrupted Mr. Fyshe, 
"let me add one word. We must make our 
discussion as brief and to the point as pos- 
sible. I have a great number of things which 
I wish to say to the meeting and it might be 
well if all of you would speak as briefly and 
as little as possible. Has anybody anything 
to say?" 

"Well," said Mr. Newberry, "what about 
organisation and officers?" 

"We have thought of it," said Mr. Fyshe. 
"We were anxious above all things to avoid 
the objectionable and corrupt methods of a 
'slate' and a prepared list of officers which 
have disgraced every part of our city politics 
292 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

until the present time. Mr. Boulder, Mr. Fur- 
long and Mr. Skinyer and myself have there- 
fore prepared a short list of offices and officers 
which we wish to submit to your fullest, freest 
consideration. It runs thus: Hon. President 
Mr. L. Fyshe, Hon. Vice-president Mr. A. 
Boulder, Hon. Secretary Mr. Furlong, Hon. 
Treasurer Mr. O. Skinyer, et cetera, et cetera, 
— I needn't read it all. You'll see it posted 
In the hall later. Is that carried? Carried I 
Very good," said Mr. Fyshe. 

There was a moment's pause while Mr. Fur- 
long and Mr. Skinyer moved into seats beside 
Mr. Fyshe and while Mr. Furlong drew from 
his pocket and arranged the bundle of min- 
utes of the meeting which he had brought 
with him. As he himself said he was too neat 
and methodical a writer to trust to jotting 
them down on the spot. 

"Don't you think," said Mr. Newberry, *T 
speak as a practical man, that we ought to do 
something to get the newspapers with us?" 

"Most important," assented several mem- 
bers. 

"What do you think. Dr. Boomer?" asked 
Mr. Fyshe of the university president, "will 
the newspapers be with us?" 

Dr. Boomer shook his head doubtfully. "It's 
an important matter," he said. "There is no 
doubt that we need, more than anything, the 
293 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

support of a clean, wholesome unbiassed press 
that can't be bribed and is not subject to money 
influence. I think on the whole our best plan 
would be to buy up one of the city newspapers." 

"Might it not be better simply to buy up the 
editorial staff?" said Mr. Dick Overend. 

"We might do that," admitted Dr. Boomer. 
"There is no doubt that the corruption of the 
press is one of the worst factors that we have 
to oppose. But whether we can best fight it 
by buying the paper itself or buying the staff 
is hard to say." 

"Suppose we leave it to a committee with full 
power to act," said Mr. Fyshe. "Let us direct 
them to take whatever steps may in their opinion 
be best calculated to elevate the tone of the 
press, the treasurer being authorised to second 
them in every way. I for one am heartily sick 
of old underhand connection between* city poli- 
tics and the city papers. If we can do any- 
thing to alter and elevate it, it will be a fine 
work, gentlemen, well worth whatever it costs 
us." 

Thus after an hour or two of such discussion 
the Clean Government League found itself or- 
ganised and equipped with a treasury and a 
programme and a platform. The latter was 
very simple. As Mr. Fyshe and Mr. Boulder 
said there was no need to drag in specific ques- 
tions or try to define the action to be taken to- 
294 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

wards this or that particular detail, such as the 
hundred and fifty year franchise, beforehand. 
The platform was simply expressed as Honesty, 
Purity, Integrity. This, as Mr. Fyshe said, 
made a straight, flat, clean issue between the 
league and all who opposed it. 

This first meeting was of course confidential. 
But all that it did was presently done over 
again, with wonderful freshness and spontaneity 
at a large public meeting open to all citizens. 
There was a splendid impromptu air about 
everything. For Instance when somebody away 
back in the hall said, 'T move that Mr. Lucul- 
lus Fyshe be president of the league," Mr. 
Fyshe lifted his hand in unavailing protest as 
if this were the newest idea he had ever heard 
In his life. 

After all of which the Clean Government 
League set itself to fight the cohorts of dark- 
ness. It was not just known where these were. 
But it was understood that they were there all 
right, somewhere. In the platform speeches 
of the epoch they figured as working under- 
ground, working in the dark, working behind 
the scenes, and so forth. But the strange thing 
was that nobody could state with any exacti- 
tude just who or what it was that the league 
was fighting. It stood for "honesty, purity, 
and integrity." That was all you could say 
about it. 

295 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Take for example the case of the press. At 
the Inception of the league it has been sup- 
posed that such was the venality and corrup- 
tion of the city newspapers that it would be 
necessary to buy one of them. But the word 
"clean government" had been no sooner uttered 
than it turned out that every one of the papers 
in the city was in favour of it: in fact had been 
working for it for years. 

They vied with one another now in giving 
publicity to the idea. The Plutorian Times 
printed a dotted coupon on the corner of its 
front sheet with the words, ''Are you in favour 
of Clean Government? If so, send us ten cents 
with this coupon and your name and address." 
The Plutorian Citizen and Home Advocate, 
went even further. It printed a coupon which 
said, "Are you out for a clean city? If so send 
us twenty-five cents to this office. We pledge 
ourselves to use it." 

The newspapers did more than this. They 
printed from day to day such pictures as the 
portrait of Mr. Fyshe with the legend below, 
"Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, who says that govern- 
ment ought to he by the people, from the peo- 
ple, for the people and to the people;" and the 
next day another labelled, "Mr. P. Spillikins, 
who says that all men are born free and equal;" 
and the next day a picture with the words, 
"Tract of ground offered for cemetery by Mr. 
296 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Furlong, showing rear of tanneries, with head 
of Mr. Furlong inserted." 

It was of course plain enough that certain 
of the aldermen of the old council were to be 
reckoned as part of the cohort of darkness. 
That at least was clear. "We want no more 
men in control of the stamp of Alderman Gor- 
iinkel and Alderman Schwefeldampf," so said 
practically every paper in the city. "The pub- 
lic sense revolts at these men. They are vul- 
tures who have feasted too long on the pros- 
trate corpses of our citizens," And so on. 
The only trouble was to discover who or what 
had ever supported Alderman Gorfinkel and 
Alderman Schwefeldampf. The very organisa- 
tions that might have seemed to be behind them 
were evidently more eager for clean govern- 
ment than the league itself. 

"The Thomas Jefferson Club Out for Clean 
Government/' so ran the newspaper headings 
of one day; and of the next, "Will help to 
clean up City Government. Eureka Club (Col- 
oured) endorses the League; Is done with 
Darkness;" and the day after that, "Sons of 
Hungary Share in Good Work: Kossuth Club 
will vote with the League." 

So strong, indeed, was the feeling against 

the iniquitous aldermen that the public demand 

arose to be done with a council of aldermen 

altogether and to substitute government by a 

297 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Board. The newspapers contained editorials 
on the topic each day and it was understood 
that one of the first efforts of the league would 
be directed towards getting the necessary sanc- 
tion of the legislature in this direction. To 
help to enlighten the public on what such gov- 
ernment meant Professor Proaser of the uni- 
versity (he was one of the three already re- 
ferred to) gave a public lecture on the growth 
of Council Government. He traced it from 
the Amphictionic Council of Greece as far down 
as the Oligarchical Council of Venice; it was 
thought that had the evening been longer he 
would have traced it clean down to modern 
times. 

But most amazing of all was the announce- 
ment that w^as presently made, and endorsed 
by Mr. Lucullus Fyshe in an interview, that 
Mayor McGrath himself would favour clean 
government, and would become the official 
nominee of the league itself. This certainly 
was strange. But it would perhaps have been 
less mystifying to the public at large, had 
they been able to listen to certain of the inti- 
mate conversations of Mr. Fyshe and Mr. 
Boulder. 

"You say then," said Mr. Boulder, "to let 
McGrath's name stand," 

"We can't do without him," said Mr. Fyshe, 
"he has seven of the wards in the hollow of 
298 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

his hand. If we take his offer he absolutely 
pledges us every one of them." 

"Can you rely on his word?" said Mr. 
Boulder. 

"I think he means to play fair with us," 
answered Mr. Fyshe. "I put it to him as a 
matter of honour, between man and man, a 
week ago. Since then I have had him carefully 
dictaphoned and I'm convinced he's playing 
straight." 

"How far will he go with us?" said Mr. 
Boulder. 

"He is willing to throw overboard Gor- 
finkel, Schwefeldampf and Undercutt. He says 
he must find a place for O'Hooligan. The 
Irish, he says, don't care for clean government; 
they want Irish Government." 

"I see," said Mr, Boulder very thoughtfully, 
"and in regard to the renewal of the franchise 
and the expropriation, tell me just exactly what 
his conditions are." 

But Mr. Fyshe's answer to this was said 
so discreetly and in such a low voice, that not 
even the birds listening in the elm trees out- 
side the Mausoleum Club could hear it. 

No wonder then that if even the birds failed 
to know everything about the Clean Govern- 
ment League, there were many things which 
such good people as Mr. Newberry and Mr. 
299 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Peter Spillikins never heard at all and never 
guessed. 

Each week and every day brought fresh tri- 
umphs to the onward march of the movement. 

"Yes, gentlemen," said Mr. Fyshe to the 
assembled committee of the Clean Governm'^.nt 
League a few days later, "I am glad to be able 
to report our first victory. Mr. Boulder and 
I have visited the state capital and we are 
able to tell you definitely that the legislature 
will consent to change our form of government 
so as to replace our council by a Board." 

"Hear, hear!" cried all the committee men 
together. 

"We saw the governor," said Mr. Fyshe. 
"Indeed he was good enough to lunch with us 
at the Pocahontas Club. He tells us that what 
we are doing is being done in every city and 
town of the state. He says that the days of 
the old-fashioned city council are numbered. 
They are setting up boards everywhere." 

"Excellent!" said Mr. Newberry. 

"The governor assures us that what we want 
will be done. The chairman of the Demo- 
cratic State Committee (he was good enough 
to dine with us at the Buchanan Club) has 
given us the same assurance. So also does the 
chairman of the Republican State Committee, 
who was kind enough to be our guest in a box 
at the Lincoln Theatre. It is most gratifying," 
300 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

concluded Mr. Fyshe, "to feel that the legis- 
lature will give us such a hearty, such a thor- 
oughly American support." 

"You are sure of this, are you?" questioned 
Mr. Newberry. "You have actually seen the 
members of the legislature?" 

"It was not necessary," said Mr. Fyshe. 
*'The governor and the different chairmen have 
them so well fixed, — that is to say, they have 
such confidence in the governor and their politi- 
cal organisers that they will all be prepared to 
give us what I have described as a thoroughly 
American support." 

"You are quite sure," persisted Mr. New- 
berry, "about the governor and the others you 
mentioned?" 

Mr. Fyshe paused a moment and then he 
said very quietly, "We are quite sure," and he 
exchanged a look with Mr. Boulder that meant 
volumes to those who would read it. 

"I hope you didn't mind my questioning you 
in that fashion," said Mr. Newberry, as he 
and Mr. Fyshe strolled home from the club. 
"The truth is I didn't feel sure in my own 
mind just what was meant by a 'Board,' and 
'getting them to give us government by a 
Board.' I know I'm speaking like an igno- 
ramus. I've really not paid as much attention 
in the past to civic politics as I ought to have. 
. 301 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

But what is the difference between a council 
and board?" 

"The difference between a council and a 
board?" repeated Mr. Fyshe. 

"Yes," said Mr. Newberry, "the difference 
between a council and a board." 

"Or call It," said Mr. Fyshe reflectively, 
"the difference between a board and a council." 

"Precisely," said Mr. Newberry. 

"It's not altogther easy to explain," said Mr. 
Fyshe. "One chief difference Is that in the 
case of a board, sometimes called a Commis- 
sion, the salary Is higher. You see the salary 
of an alderman or councillor in most cities Is 
generally not more than fifteen hundred or two 
thousand dollars. The salary of a member of 
a board or commission Is at least ten thousand. 
That gives you at once a very different class of 
men. As long as you only pay fifteen hundred 
you get your council filled up with men who 
will do any kind of crooked work for fifteen 
hundred dollars; as soon as you pay ten thou- 
sand you get men with larger ideas." 

"I see," said Mr. Newberry. 

"If you have a fifteen hundred dollar man," 
Mr. Fyshe went on, "you can bribe him at any 
time with a fifty dollar bill. On the other hand 
your ten thousand dollar man has a wider out- 
look. If you offer him fifty dollars for his 
vote on the board, he'd probably laugh at you." 
302 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"Ah, yes," said Mr. Newberry, "I see the 
idea. A fifteen hundred dollar salary is so 
low that it will tempt a lot of men into ofEce 
merely for what they can get out of it." 

"That's it exactly," answered Mr. Fyshe. 

From all sides support came to the new 
league. The women of the city, — there were 
fifty thousand of them on the municipal voters 
list, — were not behind the men. Though not 
officials of the league they rallied to its cause. 

"Mr. Fyshe," said Mrs. Buncomhearst, who 
called at the office of the president of the league 
with offers of support, "tell me what we can 
do. I represent fifty thousand women voters 
of this city, " 

(This was a favourite phrase of Mrs. Bun- 
comhearst's, though it had never been made 
quite clear how or why she represented them.) 

"We want to help, we women. You know 
we've any amount of initiative, If you'll only 
tell us what to do. You know, Mr. Fyshe, 
we've just as good executive ability as you 
men, if you'll just tell us what to do. Couldn't 
we hold a meeting of our own, all our own, 
to help the league along?" 

"An excellent idea," said Mr. Fyshe. 

"And could you not get three or four men 
to come and address it so as to stir us up?" 
asked Mrs. Buncomhearst anxiously. 
303 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

"Oh, certainly," said Mr. Fyshe. 

So it was known after this that the women 
were working side by side with the men. The 
tea rooms of the Grand Palaver and the other 
hotels were filled with them every day, busy 
for the cause. One of them even invented a 
perfectly charming election scarf to be worn 
as a sort of badge to show one's allegiance: 
and its great merit was that it was so fashioned 
that it would go with anything. 

"Yes," said Mr. Fyshe to his committee, "one 
of the finest signs of our movement is that the 
women of the city are with us. Whatever we 
may think, gentlemen, of the question of 
woman's rights in general, — and I think we 
know what we do think, — there is no doubt that 
the influence of women makes for purity in civic 
politics. I am glad to inform the committee 
that Mrs. Buncomhearst and her friends have 
organised all the working women of the city 
who have votes. They tell me that they have 
been able to do this at a cost as low as five dol- 
lars per woman. Some of the women, — for- 
eigners of the lower classes whose sense of po- 
litical morality is as yet imperfectly developed, 
— have been organised at a cost as low as one 
dollar per vote. But of course with our native 
American women, with a higher standard of 
education and morality, we can hardly expect 
to do it as low as that." 



304 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

Nor were the women the only element of 
support added to the league. 

"Gentlemen," reported Dr. Boomer, the 
president of the university, at the next com- 
mittee meeting, "I am glad to say that the 
spirit which animates us has spread to the 
students of the university. They have organ- 
ised, entirely by themselves and on their own 
account, a Students' Fair Play League which 
has commenced its activities. I understand 
that they have already ducked Alderman Gor- 
finkel in a pond near the university. I believe 
they are looking for Alderman Schwefeldampf 
to-night. I understand they propose to throw 
him into the reservoir. The leaders of them, 
— a splendid set of young fellows, — have given 
me a pledge that they will do nothing to bring 
discredit on the university." 

"I think I heard them on the street last 
night," said Mr. Newberry. 

"I believe they had a procession," said the 
president. 

"Yes, I heard them; they were shouting 
'Rah! rah! rah! Clean Government! Clean 
Government ! Rah ! rah 1 It was really inspir- 
ing to hear them." 

"Yes," said the president, "they are banded 
together to put down all the hoodlumism and 
disturbance on the street that has hitherto dis- 
graced our municipal elections. Last night, as 
305 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

a demonstration, they upset two street cars and 
a milk, waggon." 

"I heard that two of them were arrested," 
said Mr. Dick Overend. 

"Only by an error," said the president. 
"There was a mistake. It was not known that 
they were students. The two who were arrested 
were smashing the windows of the car, after 
it was upset, with their hockey sticks. A squad 
of police mistook them for rioters. As soon 
as they were taken to the police station, the 
mistake was cleared up at once. The chief of 
police telephoned an apology to the university. 
I believe the league is out again to-night look- 
ing for Alderman Schwefeldampf. But the 
leaders assure me there will be no breach 
of the peace whatever. As I say, I think 
their idea is to throw him into the reser- 



In the face of such efforts as these, oppo- 
sition itself melted rapidly away. The Phi- 
torian Times was soon able to announce that 
various undesirable candidates were abandon- 
ing the field. "Alderman Gorfinkel," it said, 
"who, it will be recalled, was thrown into a 
pond last week by the students of the college, 
was still confined to his bed when interviewed 
by our representative. Mr. Gorfinkel stated 
that he should not offer himself as a candidate 
306 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

in the approaching election. He was, he said, 
weary of civic honours. He had had enough. 
He felt it incumbent on him to step out and 
make way for others who deserved their turn 
as well as himself: in future he proposed 
to confine his whole attention to his Misfit 
Semi-Ready Establishment which he was 
happy to state was offering as nobby a line 
of early fall suiting as was ever seen at the 
price." 

There is no need to recount here in detail 
the glorious triumph of the election day itself. 
It will always be remembered as the purest, 
cleanest election ever held in the precincts of 
the city. The citizens' organization turned out 
in overwhelming force to guarantee that it 
should be so. Bands of Dr. Boomer's students, 
armed with baseball bats, surrounded the polls 
to guarantee fair play. Any man wishing to 
cast an unclean vote was driven from the booth : 
all those attempting to introduce any element of 
brute force or rowdysm into the election were 
cracked over the head. In the lower part of 
the town scores of willing workers, recruited 
often from the humblest classes, kept order with 
pickaxes. In every part of the city motor cars, 
supplied by all the leading business men, law- 
yers, and doctors of the city, acted as patrols 
to see that no unfair use should be made of 
307 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

other vehicles in carrying voters to the polls. 
It was a foregone victory from the first, — 
overwhelming and complete. The cohorts of 
darkness were so completely routed that it was 
practically impossible to find them. As it fell 
dusk the streets were filled with roaring and 
surging crowds celebrating the great victory for 
clean government, while in front of every 
newspaper oflice huge lantern pictures of 
Mayor McGrath, the Champion of Pure Gov- 
ernment, and O. Skinyer, the People's Solicitor, 
and the other nominees of the league, called 
forth cheer after cheer of frenzied enthusiasm. 

They held that night In celebration a great 
reception at the Mausoleum Club on Plutoria 
Avenue, given at its own suggestion by the 
city. The city indeed insisted on It. 

Nor was there ever witnessed even In that 
home of art and refinement a scene of greater 
charm. In the spacious corridor of the club 
a Hungarian band wafted Viennese music from 
Tyrolese flutes through the rubber trees. There 
was champagne bubbling at a score of side- 
boards where noiseless waiters poured It into 
goblets as broad and flat as floating water-lily 
leaves. And through it all moved the shepherds 
and shepherdesses of that beautiful Arcadia — 
the shepherds in their Tuxedo jackets, with vast 
white shirt-fronts broad as the map of Af- 
308 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

rlca, with spotless white waistcoats girdling 
their equators, wearing heavy gold watch-chains 
and little patent shoes blacker than sin itself, 
'■ — and the shepherdesses in foaming billows of 
silks of every colour of the kaleidoscope, their 
hair bound with glittering headbands or coiled 
with white feathers, the very symbol of munici- 
pal purity. One would search in vain the pages 
of pastoral literature to find the equal of it. 

And as they talked the good news spread 
from group to group that it was already known 
that the new franchise of the Citizens' Light 
was to be made for two centuries so as to give 
the company a fair chance to see what it could 
do. At the word of it, the grave faces of manly 
bondholders flushed with pride, and the soft 
eyes of listening shareholders laughed back in 
joy. For they had no doubt or fear, now that 
clean government had come. They knew what 
the company could do. 

Thus all night long, outside of the club, the 
soft note of the motor horns arriving and de- 
parting wakened the sleeping leaves of the elm 
trees with their message of good tidings. And 
all night long, within its lighted corridors, the 
bubbhng champagne whispered to the listen- 
ing rubber trees of the new salvation of the 
city. So the night waxed and waned till the 
slow day broke, dimming with its cheap prosaic 
glare the shaded beauty of the artificial light, 
309 



Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 

and the people of the city — the best of them, — 
drove home to their well-earned sleep, and the 
others, — In the lower parts of the city, — rose to 
their dally toll. 



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